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Rent prices drop in northwest Queens: Report

Rent prices drop in northwest Queens: Report
By Gina Martinez

Queens rent prices dropped in 2017, according to a new StreetEasy report.

The real-estate website reported that 28 percent of Queens rentals received price cuts in the fourth quarter of 2017, following a citywide trend that showed 34 percent of Manhattan rentals seeing a price cut, as well as 28 percent of rentals in Brooklyn.

Median rent in Queens dropped to $2,066 — a 1.3 percent year-over-year decrease — in the final quarter of 2017, according to the report, which said northwest Queens saw the biggest median decline in rent, with a 2.5-percent decrease to $2,129.

Rent cuts were most prevalent in Corona, where they declined by 44 percent, followed by College Point, where they dropped by 36 percent, and Long Island City, where they fell by 33 percent.

StreetEasy Senior Economist Grant Long attributed the rent cuts to the winter’s usual market slowdown, and to new construction. He said a flood of new builds primarily propelled the rental market’s slowdown over the last year, and that the fourth quarter’s rent cuts are more far-reaching than in previous years.

“The cooling in the market is no longer limited to new, high-end buildings in select pockets of the city, there’s a broader trend of rents topping out across all price points,” Long said. “The slowdown is forcing landlords across the city to cut deals, and renters now have the most negotiating leverage in years.”

StreetEasy reported that all sub-market rents grew less than two percent year-over-year citywide.

While rents have dropped, the new report said that Queens resale prices rose twice as fast as they did in 2016. The median resale price for condos, townhouses, and co-ops in the borough rose 6.1 percent year-over-year to $509,217.

Properties in Central and Northeast Queens, where resale prices went up more than 8 percent, led the borough’s price growth, the StreetEasy report said.

And Northeast Queens’ resale price, which grew by 8.2 percent to a median of $588,052, was the highest the real-estate site ever recorded in the area, according to its report.

Reach Gina Martinez by e-mail at gmartinez@cnglocal.com or by phone at (718) 260–4566.