If you stare at a wall long enough, you’ll start seeing things that aren’t there. If you look too closely at real estate numbers, your hope may become unrealistically inflated. Still, though, data is reassuring, and according to a market report released by Douglass Elliman today, Brooklyn rents have been going down for the last three months.
It’s newsworthy ’cause it’s Brooklyn, but the amount by which median borough rents have been going down is a whopping 1.1 percent. Other highlights about developments in the BK real estate report include that, “landlord concessions more than doubled” since a year ago – meaning landlords are throwing in lots of extra perks, at least compared to how many perks they were throwing in back in 2016 – studios buck the trend of decreasing borough rents and got more expensive, and the median of Brooklyn rents remains $655 less than Manhattan’s median rent. Now that you have an exact number, feel free to rub it in the face of your city cohorts and feel confirmed in your decision to live here.
That Brooklyn rents have been declining for three consecutive months now could be a reflection to the glut of new apartments on the market, forcing landlords to more competitively attract tenants. Or it could be a freak happening reflective of nothing, or it could possibly maybe be a harbinger of future affordability (don’t fantasize about it too much).
Over in Manhattan, meanwhile, the news is even better: the median rent there has had the largest decline in three and a half years. Still though, with median Manhattan rent being a whopping $3,450 and Brooklyn’s being $2,745, the grass is still cheaper over here (for now).