The median asking rent on StreetEasy was $4,150 in September 2026. But more than half the city’s rental housing is regulated, and the median rent New Yorkers paid in 2023 was $1,641.
The exact midpoint of all rents paid. Half of households pay less, half pay more. Extremes don’t pull it up or down, which makes it the better single number for a typical rent.
Adds every dollar paid across all units and divides by the count. A handful of $15,000-a-month apartments in Manhattan can drag this number far above what most people experience.
Source: 2023 NYCHVS Selected Initial Findings, Table 6. Median monthly contract rent for occupied rental units.
New York’s rental market is several markets layered on top of each other. The bars below show the median rent for each major housing type, from NYCHA public housing to what landlords ask for unregulated vacancies.
52% of New York City’s rental units are regulated—rent-stabilized, rent-controlled, public housing or in other programs such as Mitchell-Lama (about 2%, not shown). Asking rents on listing sites come only from the roughly 48% of units rented at market rates, and only from those vacant at the time.
This map shows median gross rent by ZIP Code Tabulation Area (ZCTA) from the American Community Survey. Hover or tap a zone to see its median rent and the borough it falls in.
ZIP code boundaries from NYC Open Data. Rent data from ACS 2022 5-Year Estimates, Table B25064 (median gross rent by ZCTA). Borough-level figures from NYCHVS 2023.
Median rents change little from studios to two-bedrooms and rise at three bedrooms. At every size, the market-rate median runs $445 to $700 above the rent-stabilized one. A rent-stabilized two-bedroom ($1,505) costs about $500 less than a market-rate studio ($2,001).
| Housing Type | Studio | 1-BR | 2-BR | 3-BR | 4-BR+ |
|---|
Source: calculated from the 2023 NYCHVS public use files (occupied_puf_23.csv and allunits_puf_23.csv, joined on CONTROL). Renter-occupied units (TENURE = 1), median monthly contract rent (RENT_AMOUNT, $0 rents included) weighted by the household weight FW, by number of bedrooms (BEDROOMS; 4-BR+ combines four or more) and housing type (CSR). The same method reproduces the report’s published medians: $1,641 for all units, $1,500 rent-stabilized, $2,000 market-rate and $560 public housing. — means fewer than 30 sampled households.
The NYCHVS has tracked actual rents paid roughly every three years since 1965; the 2021 survey came four years after 2017 because of the pandemic. The chart below shows the nominal trajectory since 2002, plus an inflation-adjusted line (in 2023 dollars) that shows how much of the increase is real and how much is inflation.
Source: median monthly contract rent from the NYCHVS Selected Initial Findings for each survey year, posted on the NYC Rent Guidelines Board’s NYCHVS page; 2021 figures from the 2023 report, Table 6. Inflation-adjusted to 2023 dollars with the annual average CPI-U for New York-Newark-Jersey City, as the 2023 report does. The survey changed how it classifies rent-stabilized units in 2014 and 2023, so that line is not strictly comparable across years.
Every number on this page except the $4,150 asking rent is drawn from official government surveys and administrative records. That one figure comes from StreetEasy’s September 2026 report, three years after the 2023 survey, and listing sites capture only vacant, unregulated units seeking tenants. The key sources: