Park Slope Rents On The Rise As Pandemic Deals 'Expire,' Report Says

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — Pandemic rent deals — including, in some instances, months of free rent and well-below market prices — are a thing of the past in New York City; even in Park Slope.

Since this time last year, Park Slope rents have risen nearly 22 percent to $3,225 per-month on average, according to a new report from listing website StreetEasy, which details how citywide rents skyrocketed during the first quarter of 2022 (Jan. 1 to March 31) compared to past quarters.

The rent hike in Park Slope outpaces the 17 percent rent increase in Brooklyn overall, but it isn't as severe as other neighborhoods in the northwest part of the borough where median asking rents have increased by about 35 percent — on par with the steepest rent hikes in Manhattan, according to StreetEasy.

In Gowanus, for example, the median asking rent during the first quarter of 2021 was $2,597 (a 14 percent drop from the first quarter of 2020).

This quarter, though, that figure has jumped by 35 percent to $3,500 per-month — just shy of a $1,000 increase from the year before and a $500 increase from 2020 prices.

Park Slope rent, by contrast, has gone up $575 on average this quarter compared to 2021, topping out at roughly pre-pandemic prices, according to StreetEasy.

Still, rents are rising citywide, due in part to the return of New Yorkers who fled the city during the pandemic; with them, the glut of apartments that entered the market during the pandemic have started to steadily dry up.

In Brooklyn, for instance, there were 21,863 units available for rent this past quarter — nearly half as many as last year, when 42,055 rentals were on the market, according to StreetEasy.

"Renters are generally in a tougher position than they normally are this time of year," admitted Joshua Clark, senior economist at the real estate site Zillow. "Renters can take this latest data as a sign to be prepared for their landlords to potentially present them a lease renewal with major increases."

As promised, many New Yorkers are contending with rent-renewal sticker shock, prompting some to blame landlords for their greed.

Many landlords, though, blame increases on inflation. "Landlords are trying to pay for their expenses, with inflation going on everything is getting more expensive," Marc Weber, a property manager at Weber Realty Management in NYC, told the New York Times.

Weber, whose real estate firm is capping most of its Manhattan lease renewals at a 10 percent rent increase, conceded, though, that some increases are not borne out of necessity.

"If a landlord is doubling the rent, that is greed," he told the Times.

Read the full StreetEasy report, 'With Pandemic Deals Expiring, NYC Renters Face Transformed Market,' here.