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By Giulia Carbonaro
Senior Reporter
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Defying Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pledge to make New York housing more affordable, rents continued climbing across the city this summer. Median asking prices reached their highest level since Realtor.com started tracking data in 2019 between July and September.
Rents across New York City hit a record high of $3,785 in the third quarter of the year, according to the latest Realtor.com data, up $162 from a year ago. It is $816, or 27.5 percent, above its pre-pandemic level. This shows how prices have soared in the city since the health emergency, while failing to come down as they have in other parts of the country.
For rental units in smaller homes, the median asking rent rose 7.1 percent to $3,662—the sharpest increase in all segments as "affordability-minded renters" compete "for limited options," said Jiayi Xu, senior economist at Realtor.com.
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The cost of renting a home in the city increased in four of its boroughs in the third quarter of the year. Manhattan led with an 8.3 percent increase to $5,375, followed by Brooklyn at 4.9 percent to $4,197, Queens at 3.9 percent to $3,744 and the Bronx at 2.7 percent to $3,233.
Newsweek contacted Mamdani’s office for comment by email on Tuesday morning and is awaiting a reply.
Rent Is Expensive, But Homeownership Is Even Worse
New Yorkers are used to paying more for rent than residents across most of the country. But affordability pressures are growing as rent continues outpacing earnings. Realtor.com said average hourly earnings for private-sector employees in New York City rose 4.2 percent year-over-year in August 2026, growing substantially slower than rent for zero- to two-bedroom units.
The affordability challenges faced by renters are eroding the capacity of many renters to step onto the property ladder, especially as borrowing costs have climbed back to historic highs, outweighing falling home prices.
The estimated monthly cost of buying a median-priced home in New York City fell about 1 percent, or $107, year-over-year in the third quarter, to $10,737; the median listing price declined 2 percent to $1,409,792. But, within the same time frame, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate rose from 6.57 percent to 6.68 percent.
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At that rate, buying a typical home in New York City costs $6,952 more per month than renting—and the gap is expected to grow once taking into consideration even higher mortgage rates. With the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage above 7 percent, the estimated monthly cost of that same home would rise to about $11,008, Realtor.com reported.
"New York City renters are facing a difficult affordability equation: rents are rising, especially for the smaller homes many renters compete for, while the cost of buying remains dramatically higher," said Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com.
"A modest decline in home prices brought some relief to the monthly cost of buying in the third quarter, but mortgage rates above 7 percent can quickly erase that progress.
"For renters hoping to save for a down payment, the squeeze is coming from both directions."
Mamdani’s Uphill Battle To Improve Affordability
Mamdani took office on January 1 with a pledge to lower the cost of housing for New Yorkers. This would include freezing the rent for approximately 1 million rent-stabilized apartments in the city—a promise he has kept.
But other policies aimed at boosting affordable housing construction in the city—widely considered by experts the main reason behind the affordability crisis—are bound to take a long time before bringing in results.
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Mamdani’s Block by Block housing plan aims to build 200,000 affordable homes and preserve another 200,000 over 10 years. There will be a proposed $22 billion in housing capital investment over five years.
The mayor is also trying to ensure the effort to build more affordable housing is broad-based and not concentrated in the same pockets of the city where construction normally happens.
On October 1, Mamdani announced that 12 neighborhoods that have produced the least new affordable housing recently will be put under the voter-approved Affordable Housing Fast-Track program. This will speed up affordable housing development, effective January 2027.
These are districts that have been responsible for just 1.1 percent of the city’s new affordable housing over the past five years, averaging just 12 affordable homes per district per year.
Mamdani said that efforts to build more affordable housing must come from every borough in the city. He added that "every New Yorker deserves a home they can afford, and every neighborhood must be part of delivering it."
Despite the mayor’s efforts, questions remain over how the new 200,000 affordable homes in Mamdani’s Block by Block strategy will be financed without inflating the city’s debt.
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Matthew Robinson and James Debens
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