Here's How Washington Heights Rents Have Changed In The Last Year

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS, NY — A recent study by StreetEasy looked at thousands of apartment listings around the city during the month of October. It found that the number of available rentals across the five boroughs had shrunk dramatically compared to last year, when the COVID-19-induced market had dropped rents to stunningly low levels.

Manhattan has seen the steepest inventory drop of any borough: the number of rentals on the market plummeted by 68 percent to 13,048 homes last month — its fewest since December 2012, the study found. (Excluding April 2020, when New York had just shut down as the virus spread.)

However, the significant jumps in Manhattan home and rent prices were not seen on the same level in Washington Heights.

In Washington Heights, the median home sale price in October was $460,000, which is a 4 percent increase from the same month last year.

The median rent in the neighborhood is also slightly up — sitting at $2,200 in October — up 5 percent from the same period in 202o.

The median asking sale price is the only Washington Heights-related home price statistic that is actually down from last year. The asking price on a home in the community in October 2021 was $587,000, down 2 percent from the same month last year.

In terms of looking from month to month in 2021, the median asking rent in Washington Heights was also $2,200 in September, but the average home sale price was a good bit higher at $540,000.

While the number of available homes in other boroughs has also shrunk, the drop has not been nearly as severe as in Manhattan — a trend that researchers attribute to Manhattanites who fled during the pandemic.

The study specifies, though, that Lower Manhattan bore the brunt of this drop of available homes and increase in prices. It gives no breakdown of whether the decrease in available homes also took place in Upper Manhattan, but the major increase in home prices most definitely did not.

A recent report by the city comptroller's office found that wealthy Manhattan neighborhoods saw the most residents flee the city during the pandemic, based on an analysis of change-of-address requests filed with the U.S. Postal Service.

Patch reporter Nick Garber contributed to this article.