Home rental vacancy rate in New York City falls to 1.4%

New York City’s home rental vacancy rate has fallen to 1.4%, one of the lowest since records began being kept and a key cause of higher rents, according to a new survey by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Of a total stock of 2,357,000 occupied and vacant available units, just 33,210 were available for rent, according to the New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey, which ran from January to mid-June 2023. Done by the Census on behalf of the city, the survey is conducted every three years.

“This was one of the lowest net rental vacancy rates on record since the NYCHVS began in 1965,” a report on the survey says. It's the lowest since 1968.

The vacancy rate — which covers an “apartment, a house, a group of rooms, or a single room occupied or intended for occupancy as separate living quarters” — reached a historic high of 4.54%, in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2023, the median monthly rent for all renter-occupied units was $1,641, an increase of 9% from $1,500 in 2021.

New York allows a fraction of the housing that big cities such as Boston, Seattle and Washington, D.C., do, even as demand surges, according to a report last year from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

On Long Island, housing also is not keeping up with demand.

Among the nation’s 100 largest counties, Nassau and Suffolk permitted less new housing on a per capita basis from 2013 to 2022 than all but one county, in Ohio, according to Bloomberg News.

Noah Kazis, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan Law School who researches land use and housing and who is pro-development, said in an interview Friday that zoning that restricts housing construction — which would otherwise keep pace with demand — pushes up rent and purchase costs and pushes down vacancy rates in both the city and on the Island.

“The housing markets of New York City and Long Island are linked, because the employment markets of Long Island and New York City are linked,” said Kazis. “If there’s fewer choices, and more expensive choices in the city, some people will start looking on Long Island, which will further drive up prices on Long Island, given the restrictive zoning and low building rates on Long Island.”

On the Island, vacancy rates are low but not record-setting.

About 5.4% of apartments in Nassau County were vacant in 2022, compared to 5% a decade earlier, according to the most recent data available from the U.S. Census. The county’s total number of units rented appears to have shrunk in recent years to about 84,570, with a median monthly rent of $2,010, the 2022 data shows.

In Suffolk, about 4.3% of apartments were vacant in 2022, compared to 4.8% in 2012, the data shows. The volume of rented units has fallen in recent years to roughly 93,890, while the median monthly rent grew to $2,136, according to the 2022 estimates.

Newsday reported last month that Long Island home prices hovered near records in the fourth quarter of 2023 as the highest mortgage rates in more than 20 years did little to discourage homebuying.

With Sarina Trangle

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.