Renting a New York City apartment isn’t for the weak.
The median Manhattan rental price for a market-rate apartment soared to $5,000 in July — up 3% from June and 6% from July 2025 — an August 13 report from The Real Deal and appraisal firm Samuel Miller found.
The record-high rent comes alongside a staggering drop in public market listings. Apartment inventory in the borough has dropped by roughly 4,000 units, or 39% year-over-year, as homes are spending far fewer days on the market and people are signing leases with fewer discounts off the asking price.
Last summer, rentals spent an average of 48 days on the market. This summer, it’s 36. Shorter duration on the market is typically an indicator of tighter supply and higher demand, as aspiring renters snap up open units more quickly.
Finding housing in the city has long been a challenge. Business Insider has heard from single moms who moved in together to cut costs, side hustlers struggling to make ends meet, and retirees worried they can’t pay to age in the city.
The majority of New Yorkers spend more than 30% of their income on rent, the threshold economists classify as unaffordable.
Prices are jumping as inventory drops
The rental market trends are largely in line with America’s broader housing market. A 2026 report from the Harvard Joint Center on Housing Studies found that the US has a significant shortage of affordable homes and that rents are rising. Even so, vacancies for both expensive rentals and single-family homes have increased, as many families can’t afford to move. This kind of market stagnation is also reflected in NYC, as the Real Deal report showed the number of new leases dropped by 19%.
The Real Deal report also found that, in Manhattan, prices are rising fastest for apartments with two or more bedrooms. The year-over-year median price for “luxury” units — those in the top 10% of the market — has jumped 31% year over year to $13,750 a month.
Downtown neighborhoods have the steepest prices, followed by the West Side, East Side, and Northern Manhattan. Listing inventory across all areas, however, has dropped about 40% in the last year.
To address the housing affordability crisis, Mayor Zohran Mamdani launched his “Block by Block” plan, which aims to build 200,000 affordable homes during his tenure. Business Insider has covered city efforts to convert historic hotels into apartments, construct low-cost senior housing, and repurpose libraries, office buildings, and city-owned property for homes. Increasing supply could help lower prices in the long-run.
The city and state have pledged billions of dollars to these housing initiatives and are also leaning on support from nonprofits, developers, and big banks to foot the bill.
The Real Deal report only captures market-rate units, not rent-stabilized apartments, which make up 44% of Manhattan’s housing. Mamdani’s rent freeze — one of his top campaign promises — takes effect this fall and will cap rents on those rent-stabilized apartments for one- and two-year leases. While rent freezes can help alleviate costs for (often high-earning) residents in the short term, the policy can cause market-rate costs to increase. A rent freeze under former Mayor Bill de Blasio lapsed for this reason.
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