Astoria Apartments Vanish From Market As Prices Keep Rising: Study

ASTORIA, QUEENS — Looking for a new place to rent in Northwest Queens? Unfortunately, this may be one of the very worst times to do so, as the area emerges as one of the only spots in New York City where rental inventory continues to decline.

A new study by StreetEasy singles out Astoria, Long Island City and Sunnyside for their precipitous drop in available apartments, which dwindled to just 1,593 units combined by May.

That is the lowest total for those neighborhoods since April 2020, when the real estate market was "at a standstill" in the pandemic's early days, according to StreetEasy.

With such short supply, rents have unsurprisingly kept rising: between April and May, Astoria's median average rent increased from $2,350 to $2,500, while Long Island City's rose from $4,000 to $4,190, according to StreetEasy's report, which examined rental listings across the city in May.

Northwest Queens's inventory drop is all the more remarkable for the fact that inventory is rising in most other parts of the city.

In Brooklyn, the number of available rentals rose by about 10 percent between February and May, while in Manhattan, inventory has jumped by 33 percent since it bottomed out in December. Downtown Manhattan has seen an especially large increase in inventory — by 32 percent in the East Village between April and May, for example.

In Queens, by contrast, rentals are still getting scarcer, declining from 3,917 units in April to 3,749 in May.

Astoria has led the way, with 122 fewer homes leaving the market between April and May — the second-biggest inventory drop of any New York neighborhood, behind only Bushwick, Brooklyn. Sunnyside's inventory shrunk by 13, while Long Island City's actually grew modestly, by 37 units.

Josh Clark, a senior economist at Zillow, said that renters who scored "pandemic deals" in pricey Manhattan neighborhoods are now fleeing to the outer boroughs after those discounts disappeared.

"Those renters are now looking for more affordable places to live, especially in Brooklyn and Queens, which is why inventory is not recovering as quickly in those areas," Clark said in the report. "My advice for potential renters this summer: if you have the flexibility to wait it out a couple of months, there will be more options available in late summer or early fall."

Indeed, the lack of options is visible by doing a quick search: in Astoria, anyone looking for an apartment at or below $1,800 per month would find just 10 available units as of Thursday.