A journalist recently noticed something strange about the New York City housing market. During the peak of the COVID crisis in NYC, the city lost close to seven percent of its population as people either died or moved away.
The real estate vacancy rate was close to twenty-five percent.
Since then, according to an array of parties with considerable interest in rents, the population of NYC has rebounded. As a result, housing is once again scarce and rents have soared.
Except…there’s no actual indication that the city’s population has actually rebounded, and certainly not by enough to explain soaring rental prices. After all, the city’s population had already started to decline before 2020.
