Frozen rents and stalled mobility raise red flags for New York’s housing pipeline
New York City’s rental market shifted from unaffordable to almost immobile, with renters effectively frozen in place even as asking rents climbed to new highs in late 2025, new data from Realtor.com showed.
In the fourth quarter of 2025, the median asking rent in the city reached $3,585, up 6.6% year over year, with Manhattan at $4,886 and borrowers needing roughly $195,000 in income to keep housing costs under 30% of earnings, according to the Q4 2025 NYC Rental Report.
Nearly 90% of renters stayed in the same unit they occupied a year earlier, far above the national average of 78.4%.
“New York City’s rental market is effectively locked in place,” said Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com®.
“Asking rents are rising, while at the same time, the inventory for units is being squeezed by record‑low turnover.”
Rents climbed as mobility stalled
The report highlights rent stabilization as a key driver of the city’s low vacancy and low mobility. Roughly 40% of New York’s rental stock is stabilized, with those units posting a vacancy rate just under 1% in 2023, compared with about 1.8% for market‑rate apartments.
The stay‑put trend is most extreme in the Bronx, where 93.7% of renters remained in place in 2024 and rents have risen more than 50% over six years. Overcrowding, defined as more than two people per bedroom, is nearly twice as common in rent‑stabilized homes as in market rentals, the report found.
“As residential mobility breaks down, we see a domino effect on the city’s economy,” said Realtor.com economist Jiayi Xu.
“Renters are delaying major life changes like job transitions or family formation because the cost of moving, or the lack of anything to move to, has become a big barrier.”
Rent freeze risks deeper gridlock
Mayor Mamdani’s planned rent freeze for stabilized units, expected as soon as October 2026, promises short‑term relief for sitting tenants. But analysts warned it could tighten the supply of available apartments even further if residents held on to below‑market leases, pushing more pressure onto market‑rate stock.
Renters are already strained by rising costs, with one Harvard‑backed estimate showing roughly half of US renters paying at least 30% of income on housing and utilities. The New York mortgage market also found buyers willing to stay put in high‑priced metros, even as rates stay elevated, reinforcing the lock‑in effect on both the rental and ownership sides.
New York’s frozen rental ladder point to a growing pool of would‑be first‑time buyers who could not yet move, but who represent significant pent‑up demand once affordability and inventory eased.
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