Manhattan rents soared near record highs the month before socialist Zohran Mamdani won the city’s mayoral election.
The median rent on new leases was $4,600 in October – up 7.1% from the previous year and 1.1% on a monthly basis, according to appraiser Miller Samuel Inc and brokerage Douglas Elliman.
That’s the third-highest figure on record, disappointing New Yorkers who typically see prices cool in the fall season.
Likewise, apartment hunters have found little relief from eye-popping prices in other boroughs.
The median rent on a Brooklyn lease in October was $3,850 – up 6.9% from previous year and the third-highest number on record.
In Northwest Queens, including Astoria and parts of Long Island, the median rent jumped to $3,598 – up 7.4% on a yearly basis.
Nevertheless, apartment hunters were active in October amid a low housing supply, pushing rents up, Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, told Bloomberg.
Mamdani ran his campaign on such affordability issues – promising to freeze the rent on rent-stabilized apartments, offer free buses and open city-owned grocery stores.
Housing costs have continued to climb for renters, who account for two out of three NYC residents.
Cost-of-living was top of mind for voters in recent elections across the country, which saw many Dems – including Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races – clinch victories.
A whopping 72% of voters in New York City noted that housing costs, specifically, are a major problem, according to an NBC News exit poll.
Wall Street has feared Mamdani’s election, concerned that his plan to tax the rich could ignite an exodus of wealthy New Yorkers.
As of October, “there is no exodus coming out of New York,” Miller told Bloomberg, citing heated leasing and home sales activity.
“You can’t have rising rent prices and leasing activity if there’s an exodus from the city – it shows just the opposite,” he added. “Housing affordability is getting worse.”
In Manhattan’s luxury real estate market, median prices jumped to $11,995 in October – up a staggering 20% from a year earlier.
A major part of Mamdani’s campaign was his YIMBY – “Yes In My Backyard” – pitch to ramp up the city’s affordable housing projects, including a promise of 200,000 new, union-built units.
The mayor-elect is slated to reap the benefits of housing-related ballot measures approved by voters on Election Day – though he has given few signs of whether he actually plans to use them.
Mayor Eric Adams pushed forward with the proposals despite heated objections from City Council members.
The measures cede some power to the mayoral office in an effort to erase some of the red tape in the city’s notoriously slow process for approving new housing.
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