Mercy For UES Renters As Inventory Inches Up — But Rents Still Rising

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — For the first time in what feels like ages, there's good news for Upper East Side apartment renters, as the number of available apartments in the neighborhood has begun slowly inching up — though rent prices are still increasing for now.

The new study by StreetEasy examined rental listings across the city in May. After months of surging demand left the city with barely any open apartments, the report found that inventory has finally begun increasing in many neighborhoods — including the Upper East Side.

The Upper East Side gained 237 available apartments between April and May, the third straight month where it has seen at least some increase in inventory. By contrast, between October 2020 until March 2022, the neighborhood's inventory had decreased almost every single month.

Still, the Upper East Side's inventory remains a far cry from where it stood a few months into the pandemic. In October 2020, there were a staggering 6,310 rentals on the market in the neighborhood, according to StreetEasy data, after a mass exodus from the city created a brief paradise for tenants.

The Upper East Side's trend is mirrored across Manhattan, where the borough-wide rental inventory has reached 13,933 — a 34 percent increase from its lowest point in December 2021. (Yet that figure is still lower than it was pre-pandemic — Manhattan had 21,881 rental units available in May 2019.)

Queens has been the relative exception to the uptick in inventory, with neighborhoods like Astoria and Sunnyside continuing to see their housing stock depleted even further — probably by people seeking deals in the outer boroughs after fleeing pricey Manhattan neighborhoods, according to the study.

But the slow rise in available apartments has not yet produced any tangible benefits for renters. On the Upper East Side, the median asking rent still increased from $3,400 in April to $3,500 in May, StreetEasy found.

Josh Clark, a senior economist at Zillow, said that renters should try to hold off on searching for apartments until the late summer or early fall, when there may be more options available.

"During the pandemic, the biggest deals were happening in the most expensive parts of the city, especially Downtown Manhattan," Clark said in the StreetEasy report. "Fast forward to now, those pandemic deals have dried up, and renters who were able to afford living in the city’s most expensive neighborhoods are now being faced with the reality of a fully recovered market."