Rents in some of New York City’s wealthiest enclaves have spiked more than 60% since the pandemic, forcing even six-figure earners to struggle for apartments.
Tribeca and SoHo posted the sharpest increases, each soaring around 60% from 2020 to 2025, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of StreetEasy and US Census Bureau data.
Tribeca’s median asking rent now tops $8,000 a month.
Greenpoint and Williamsburg crossed $5,000, while Long Island City jumped above $4,500.
Chelsea and Dumbo saw hikes of 50% or more.
Citywide, rents climbed 27% between 2020 and 2024, outpacing Los Angeles, Boston and Washington, DC, Bloomberg reported, citing Zillow’s rent index.
High-earning renters — career professionals who work in industries such as finance and the arts — are now competing in bidding wars once reserved for homebuyers.
At least 65,000 households making between $100,000 and $300,000 are paying a third or more of their income on rent, according to city Housing and Vacancy Survey estimates reviewed by Bloomberg.
That’s tens of thousands more than just four years ago.
“It’s much easier to raise rents between tenants,” Emily Eisner, chief economist at the Fiscal Policy Institute, told Bloomberg News.
“That’s a big part of why all the rents are going up, especially for high-income people.”
Economists tie the surge to landlords clawing back Covid-era losses, high interest rates that kept would-be buyers in rentals and a wave of luxury development.
Long Island City alone added nearly 7,200 apartments from 2020 to 2024, mostly high-rises, with new-development median rents about $625 a month higher than typical neighborhood apartments, Bloomberg reported.
“The rent crisis in New York City isn’t a housing shortage,” longtime resident Lisa Goren told Bloomberg News.
“It’s an affordability shortage.”
Wealthier renters have surged back since what analysts call the “Great Reshuffle” of Covid-19, when thousands of affluent New Yorkers left and rents briefly plunged.
By 2023, the number of city households earning more than $100,000 jumped from 1.03 million to 1.49 million, Census data show. Households earning under $25,000 fell by more than 100,000 in the same span.
Between 2019 and 2023, the number of millionaires renting in New York nearly doubled, according to RentCafe. Some recent estimates show one in 24 city residents is now worth more than $1 million.
Cole McMahon-Gioeli, 26, who works in finance, told Bloomberg he pays 29% of his income to rent a Lower East Side two-bedroom with a roommate.
With one-bedrooms in his neighborhood now asking $4,125, he said he would have to surrender more than half his pay to live alone.
“I thought by the time I was 26 surely I would be able to afford a one-bedroom in a location I love,” McMahon-Gioeli said.
“That feels so far away now.”
Shanée Benjamin, an illustrator earning six figures, recalled finding apartments for $500 when she moved to the city in 2013. She now pays $5,500 for a Crown Heights two-bedroom — a 72% jump from the year before.
“If you made $150,000, you used to be able to live comfortably,” Benjamin said.
“The people coming in are transplants. They’re pushing out native New Yorkers and working class New Yorkers.”
Prospect Heights software engineer Ben Miller told Bloomberg he remains in a rent-regulated building under the city’s 421-a program. When the exemption expires, his family faces the prospect of moving.
“We always talked about leaving New York altogether,” he said, “but I don’t think any of us really wants to do that.”
Mayor Eric Adams, running for reelection as an independent, has touted his “City of Yes” plan for delivering record new housing. But analysts note most of it targets the wealthy.
There’s very little incentive for developers to build affordable housing without substantial government subsidies, housing experts told Bloomberg News.
Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, who defeated former governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary, has ridden the affordability issue to the front of the mayoral race. He has promised to freeze rent hikes on nearly 1 million stabilized units, currently capped at increases of 4.5%.
“The biggest problem facing New York City is affordability,” Mamdani told Bloomberg. “This is the most expensive city in the United States of America. It’s also the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world. And one in four New Yorkers in that same city are living in poverty.”
Bloomberg reported that Mamdani’s campaign has resonated in affluent neighborhoods hammered by rent spikes.
Greenpoint, SoHo and Long Island City voted overwhelmingly for him in June. Roughly 72% of Democrats in Greenpoint backed his candidacy, Board of Elections data show.
Some in real estate warn his plan would worsen shortages by discouraging landlords from making repairs. But others say high-income renters are proof the affordability crunch is spreading up the economic ladder.
“What has changed is who is feeling the crunch,” said Barika Williams, executive director of the Association of Neighborhood & Housing Development.
“It’s spreading all the way up.”
