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The conspiracy theory of rent increases
An article in Curbed by Lane Brown has gotten much publicity in Twitter. The article makes two factual claims: 1) New York City is still losing households, and thus there was no reason for rents to go back up in 2021-22; and 2) landlords are conspiring to keep supply down because some apartments are still vacant. Since the city seems extremely busy to me, the first claim seemed a bit insane. But having said that, I live in touristy Midtown Manhattan two blocks from Central Park, so my experience is probably not an argument-settler. Brown relies on U.S. Postal Service change of address data. Brown reasons: more people filed change of address forms to move out of the city than filed change of address forms to move into the city. Thus, the city is continuing to lose people. But as Brown himself admits, change-of-address data misses a lot. He admits that this data “misses [moves] to the city from abroad.” Because of COVID-related travel bans, immigration presumably declined in 2020. But legal immigration has rebounded to pre-COVID levels, and some of that increase may have spilled over into New York. Change-of-address data might not include recent graduates and other people who left their parents elsewhere in the U.S. to move into the city, because those people might still be getting mail at their parents’ houses. Such data also might not reflect people who left the city temporarily in 2020 but didn’t bother with change-of-address requests because they still picked up mail at their old homes. Most importantly, change-of-address trends do not reflect people deciding to leave roommates and get their own apartments, at least not if people changed addresses within the city. This means that even if population is stable or declining, the number of households looking for apartments […]
