By: Ilana Siyance

The hunt for a New York City apartment rental has always been difficult, but of late it has become down right ludicrous. As reported by the NY Post, this summer the market has been cutthroat, with renters needing to battle it out like never before to land a shot at a NYC rental. The days where landlords offered discounts or concessions are long gone, with landlords calling all the shots and hiking up prices to historic levels. Showings are a nightmare with lines of desperate apartment hunters waiting around the block.

On top of that, bidding wars are frequent, as there are so many tenants desperate for a roof over their heads and just not enough to go around. “Landlords resumed control and landlords could dictate terms that were more and more favorable for them,” said Jonathan Miller, president of appraisal firm Miller Samuel, who noted that the tables turned in favor of landlords right after the pandemic. Per the Post, the rental craze reached new heights in June, with nearly a fourth of new leases in both Manhattan and Brooklyn caught up in bidding wars.

Aurielle Catron, a 29-year-old security engineer endured a month-long search for a two-bedroom apartment in in Bushwick. She went to 52 viewings, and lost her dream home in a bidding war, when it went up from $2,800 to $3,600.

“People are willing to say, ‘Hey, if you give me this apartment, I’ll pay like $200, $500, $600 over asking for rent,’” she told Bloomberg.

“I can’t compete with that.” Catron finally landed a rent-stabilized fourth-floor unit for $3,200 a month—but there’s no elevator or laundry room. Still, at least she found something. Amber Melhouse, 49, was forced out of her Brooklyn pad when the landlord hiked the rent by a shocking $1,350 a month. She has been searching for a smaller apartment, but to no avail. She’s been crashing with friends, still frantically searching for a studio apartment. “I feel like this whole apartment-hunt experience has been a test of whether I’m meant to stay in New York. Like, is this New York’s way of kicking me out?” Melhouse told Bloomberg News. “I don’t want to leave because my whole life is here.”

There’s also a lot of recent graduates flooding the market. Take Cornell grad Matthew Braganza. He saw close to 100 apartments. After which, he gave up on living alone and is now sharing an apartment in the Lower East Side with three roommates. “I had a harder time finding an apartment than I did finding a job,” Braganza said. “It felt like I was competing with a million people.”

The high mortgage rates are leaving many with no option to buy and so a flood of renters are vying for the same few rentals. To add heat to the situation, some real estate agents are using tricks to further stroke bidding wars. They set up open houses with an underpriced unit, luring in hordes of hopefuls, which results in bidding wars, after which they pick the highest bidder or the tenant with the best financials. “There’s too many TikTok brokers now that are trying to do things to go viral,” Douglas Elliman agent Keyan Sanai told Bloomberg. “At the end of the day, we’re in the business of sales. But 80% of the rental market competition is real.”