Manhattan rental prices may be soaring to record highs, but that isn’t stopping eager renters from flocking to the borough in hopes of snagging a place to call their own. And it seems plenty of them have the exact same idea!
Coming as no surprise to many, Manhattan found itself among the top five most competitive rental markets in the country according to RentCafe’s most recent report on rental competitiveness nationwide.
As it currently stands, Manhattan’s Rental Competitiveness Index (RCI) clocks in at 81.7, jumping 8.4 points over the past year and securing the titles of fourth fastest rising market and fifth most competitive market nationally. For reference, the national RCI score is currently a 74.6, so yeah, you can say things are pretty competitive over here.
The issue is that while the demand is high, vacancy is quite low. Rental supply increased by just 0.15% after a period of no new deliveries, and 70% of renters chose to renew (up 4.3% year-over-year), pushing occupancy to a whopping 95.9%, among the highest in the country.
But this isn’t surprising–it’s hard to forget all the videos we were seeing on social media which were comparing apartment hunting in NYC to the Hunger Games–apartments are being filled five days faster than usual and 11 renters are competing per unit, which is up from seven last year.
And while Brooklyn didn’t make it to the top five it’s not much better–here, the RCI score is 80.6, rising 3.1 points and ranking it eighth nationally. Rental supply increased by just 0.61%, verses 0.69% a year ago, and lease renewals increased from 63.8% to 65.8%.
As it turns out, though, we’re just part of a bigger mess. According to the report, the Northeast is “holding strong as a rental hotbed,” claiming seven spots in the top 20. Four made the top 10, including Manhattan and Suburban Philadelphia (tied for fifth place), followed by Brooklyn and Bridgeport-New Haven, MA, both in eighth place.
When all is said and done NYC did recently take the title of the Best City in the World and it was also named the prettiest city at night, so competitiveness in the rental market isn’t surprising to us. With all that being said, however, you may want to renew your lease once it’s time to avoid the apartment hunting headache. And if you do have to move, maybe avoid an apartment near a subway station–rent is increasing most near those.
To compile this report, RentCafe’s research team analyzed Yardi Systems apartment data across 139 rental markets in the U.S. The markets were ranked based on a score according to five metrics: apartment occupancy rate, average total days vacant, prospective renters per vacant unit, renewal lease rate, and share of new apartments completed during the same timeframe compared to the existing overall supply at the start of Q1 2025.
Each market was then assigned a percentage weight for each metric–30% for apartment occupancy rate, 15% for average vacant days, 15% for prospective renters per vacant unit, 30% for renewal lease rate, and 10% for the share of new apartments–and given a ranking. See the full study.
