By: Benyamin Davidsons
An eight-second-long TikTok video, captioned “the reality of NYC apartment hunting and the absurd prices” went viral. The video, which showed a tiny apartment where the door couldn’t open without hitting the kitchen appliances, got more than 2.2 million views as of Friday afternoon. “Imagine paying $4000 per month to get whacked with the door any time you use the stove and someone comes home,” said @charlottesaround, who posted the video. “How is this not a fire hazard???”, she wrote. The TikTok yielded thousands of shares and over 175,000 likes. Comments to the post included, one that read, “Imagine wanting to live in NYC.” As reported by the NY Post, it is not clear where in NYC the apartment was, and Charlotte didn’t comment for the paper. She only said that she was on a tour of this unit, when she made the video.
Despite the fact that NYC rental apartments got bashed on social media, the reality is there is more demand than supply and bidding wars have become a regular thing in securing a lease. Last spring, rental prices fell to record lows, as the pandemic loomed and offices were remote. At that time, people were moving out of the city, allowing opportunists to get good deals or upgrade to larger pads. By the fall of 2021, however, prices picked up and there were no more bargains to be had. Rental housing inventory has fallen, leading to long lines at open houses. In fact, the rebound has some tenants hit with rent hikes, as high as 79 percent more per month, to renew leases, as per the Post. In the three boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, there is currently less than 10,000 apartments listed as available, as per data from Douglas Elliman.
Last week, another viral TikTok had showed some 50 applicants who showed up for an open house in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The unidentified real estate agent was trying to take a selfie with all the applicants, boasting about the crowd that had gathered for the listing. He’s “never seen this many people for an open house in 17 years”, said the TikTok posted by @ sarahloukiernan.
February figures showed that in Manhattan, close to 20 percent of all listed rentals entered a bidding war, up from just 0.9% in February 2021, as per Douglas Elliman. In Brooklyn,19 percent of all rentals had bidding wars, up from 0.7% last February. In northwest Queens, 9.3 percent of listings got that kind of attention, up from 0.3% the year before.
