Is NYC getting more or less affordable?
A tracked snapshot of citywide housing costs. Not a single "as of today" number, but each figure labeled with exactly when and where it came from.
How this actually gets updated: by hand. The site does run scheduled checks for the mortgage rate and HPD's AMI chart, but nothing watches these figures: the sources publish reports, not data a script can read reliably, and some block automated requests. Someone checks the latest reports and adds a dated snapshot to this page's data file. There is one snapshot so far (2026-08); history builds up as updates are added. We won't claim a monthly cadence that hasn't happened.
Note the rent and co-op figures above are from different periods (March 2026 vs. Q1 2025); each is the most recent figure we could verify against a stable, dated source at the time this was built. We'd rather show you the real gap than paper over it with a single invented "as of" date.
What New Yorkers actually earn and pay Census survey
67% of households here rent. "Rent actually paid" covers every renter household: rent-stabilized apartments, renewals, and people who moved in years ago. That's why it's far below what a new lease costs today. Citywide median rent: $3,995 (March 2026), cited above.
U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024 1-Year Estimates: tables B19013, B25064, B25070, B25119, B25003. Margins are the Census's 90% margins of error. The 30% and 50% shares are this site's division of the Census counts, leaving out households with no computed ratio.
Rent trend
Only one data point exists so far, and a trend needs at least two. Check back after the next update, or see the 40x rent rule guide for what today's median means in practice.
What this means for you
These are citywide medians; your actual number depends heavily on borough, neighborhood, and unit size (see neighborhood pages for more specific figures where available). Run the citywide median through your own numbers on the Rent Calculator or Co-op Calculator, or get a quick read on where you stand with the Housing Reality Check.