2,000 for a frickin' studio

 

Queens Post

The average price paid to nab a studio in Queens in June was over $2,000 per month, with the average for a one bedroom hitting $2,500 for the first time on record, according to a new report by the real estate firm M.N.S.

The average price paid for a studio was $2,045, up 12 percent from June 2021, according to the report. The average for a one bedroom was $2,500, up 16 percent from a year earlier, and the average cost of a two bedroom was $3,322, representing a 23 percent jump year-over-year.

Rental prices increased across the borough, although they skyrocketed in Astoria, Long Island City, Forest Hills and Jamaica, the report revealed. The report did not provide a breakdown for Sunnyside or Woodside.

The average price paid to snag an apartment in Astoria last month was up 32 percent compared to June 2021. In Long Island City, the average rent was up 28 percent from 12 months prior, while in Jamaica and Forest Hills it was up 21 percent and 16 percent respectively.

In Astoria apartments of all sizes saw lofty increases — although it was most notable with the bigger units.

The average rent for a studio apartment in Astoria in June was $2,211. This figure was up 26 percent — from $1,760 — one year prior.

One-bedroom apartments in the neighborhood saw a 28 increase — with the June average being $2,553, up from $1,989 in June 2021.

The average rent to get into a two-bedroom apartment in Astoria was $3,249, up a whopping 41 percent from 12 months prior. The average two-bedroom went for $2,307 in June 2021.

The red-hot Long Island City rental market shows no signs of cooling down.

The average price paid for a studio apartment in Long Island City in June 2022 was $3,144, up 24 percent from a year ago; a one-bedroom fetched $3,970, up 31 percent from 12 months earlier; while a two-bedroom went for $5,463, up 28 percent.

New York's decisions to prioritize upscale real estate development and speculation has led to death and malaise in the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic

Association for Neighborhood & Housing and Development


New York City remains the epicenter of the global COVID-19 pandemic, but its effects are being felt differently across neighborhoods. As ANHD's  previous analysis  shows, this virus is hitting low-income communities of color the hardest. The neighborhoods with the highest range of positive COVID-19 cases in the city are home to communities of color whose residents are disproportionately employed in frontline service occupations and face among the highest rates of rent burden and overcrowding. These communities – the epicenters of the epicenter - are home to the largely invisible workforce that is keeping New York City running in this moment of crisis, and they are the ones who are bearing the brunt of its impacts. Recent data released by the City’s Department of Health shows that Black and Latinx New Yorkers are dying at twice the rate of whites - making clear that this pandemic is not only a public health crisis, but a crisis of racial and economic justice as well.   


Among the host of historic inequities behind the disparate impact of COVID-19, one is particularly striking: the string of hospital closures that took place in these communities over the past few decades. At least 18 hospitals have closed all of their inpatient services in New York City since 1998 - leading to the loss of thousands of hospital beds - with two-thirds of those closures occurring in the outer boroughs. A look at the data shows that the majority of these outer borough hospital closures fell in lower-income communities of color that bear the brunt of the coronavirus crisis today. These community hospitals catered to neighborhood residents, many of whom lack private insurance; the mass closure and downsizing to outpatient services means less access to necessary health services, especially in a time of crisis. Households without health insurance have few options if they get sick, other than visiting the remaining public hospitals, adding to the likelihood of exposure to coronavirus and the further straining of the healthcare system. 

 While community hospitals were being closed in low-income communities of color, hospitals in wealthier sections of the city were being converted into luxury residential buildings, further depleting the city's overall supply of hospital beds. Of the 18 hospitals that closed in the last two decades, over 40% have been replaced by residential developments, most of them with rents or sales prices that are astronomically out of reach for the average New Yorker. At the site of St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan, where countless poor New Yorkers received care during the AIDS crisis, now stands Greenwich Lane, a luxury condo building. Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, a community medical facility known as America’s first teaching hospital, was replaced by 5 River Park where a studio apartment was recently sold for $1.15 million.

In Queens, the epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis, the closures of St. John's Hospital, Parkway 
 Hospital, and Mary Immaculate Hospital have led to massive overburdening of nearby medical facilities. Each of the neighborhoods where these hospitals were once located in have some of the highest rates of COVID cases in the city.

 


 The former site of St. John’s Hospital is located just blocks from Elmhurst Hospital - the same hospital that has seen among the most COVID-19-related deaths in the country. What stands in its place now is Queens Pointe, a market-rate apartment building. The former site of Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica - another COVID-19 hotspot - was transformed into a residential development in 2009. Nearby Parkway Hospital, which once served low-income Queens residents, was also torn down to make room for a residential building in 2008.

 

 



 As these hospitals continued to serve poor and uninsured New Yorkers, financial restructuring and an inability to pay their bills contributed to a spate of closures in the late 2000s. The deprioritization of hospital infrastructure and subsequent development of residential - particularly luxury residential buildings - on these former hospital sites is the direct result of the City’s land use decisions. The Bloomberg era saw a pattern of high profile rezonings of both public and private land to facilitate luxury residential development, with few if any public benefits secured in exchange for the enormous value these conversions provided to private real estate developers. The prioritization of profit over community need has left a long-lasting legacy across New York, and communities of color have continued to face the brunt of it through displacement, housing instability, job loss, and health disparities. Communities and advocates have long said that these land use decisions have life and death consequences; we as a city are now forced to reckon with the consequences of those decisions in this moment.

Rents are inflating in Ridgewood, Flushing and Rego Park

QNS


A recent report found that rental units in Queens saw slight increases in the new year.
MNS Real Estate released their January 2019 Rental Market Report, which took a look at the trends in real estate rental prices throughout January.

 
According to the report, average rental prices in January 2019 increased from $2,202.98 to $2,210.32, marking a 0.33 percent increase from December 2018. Compared to January 2018, average rental prices have increased 1.67 percent year-over-year.
 
Compared to December 2018, average rental prices for studios in January 2019 decreased from $1,834.60 to $1,783.31. Average rental prices for one-bedroom units increased from $2,094.52 to $2,117.10 and two-bedroom units increased from $2,679.83 to $2,681.02.
 
Flushing and Ridgewood each saw the largest increases in average prices for one-bedroom units during January 2019, raising 5.2 percent and 4.3 percent, respectively. The largest decreases in average prices for studio units were found in Jackson Heights and Long Island City, decreasing 9.9 percent and 4.3 percent, respectively.