Tag Archives: RentHop

Apartment evictions are down, study says

There have been three evictions so far this year in Gramercy. (Photo by Sabina Mollot)

By Sabina Mollot

Residential evictions are down in New York City from last year, according to a study conducted by apartment listings website RentHop.

Overall there was a 9.6 percent drop throughout the city with evictions tapering off in each borough based on eviction information from January 1 to March 11 in 2018 and January 1 to March 11 in 2019.

The study also found that: both Brooklyn and The Bronx have a much higher eviction rate than Manhattan, but both also had sharp drops from 2018 to 2019. The Bronx went from 1,558 to 1,225 (a 21.4 percent decrease). Brooklyn went from 1,170 to 994 (a 15 percent decrease). Manhattan’s numbers, meanwhile, only decreased slightly from 518 to 486 (6.2 percent). Queens has a higher eviction rate than Manhattan, but it too only decreased slightly from 733 to 716 (2.3 percent). Staten Island easily has the fewest evictions, having gone from 127 to 97. Percentage-wise, this was the sharpest decrease at 23.6 percent.

Adrian McHale, who worked on the study, used numbers from the city’s open data portal, which includes information such as addresses but not the reason given for the eviction.

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Fewer heat complaints in NYC, but chilliest renters are remaining that way

The bomb cyclone of 2018 is believed to be the reason for a dip in 311 calls about a lack of heat in 2019. (Photo by Maria Rocha-Buschel)

By Sabina Mollot

With temperatures over the weekend and stretching into Monday and Tuesday feeling absolutely bone-chilling, it may seem hard to believe that the amount of heat complaints made by New Yorkers this year is dwarfed by the number of similar calls made last year by the same time period. The reason is most likely that last year, there was the “bomb cyclone” causing heat-related 311 calls to spike.

RentHop, an apartment listings service, has been conducting annual studies to determine which neighborhoods in New York have the most freezing renters based on the volume of 311 calls about lack of heat. What they have found, in comparing the 2019 data to 2018, is that it’s mostly the same neighborhoods each year with a direct correlation showing neighborhoods with rents lower than the city’s median (around $3,000 for a one-bedroom unit) producing more heat complaints.

The study also came up with a formula that “de-dupes” or ignores duplicate complaints (more than one from one address on the same day) as well as a formula that “normalizes,” taking into account that some neighborhoods are bigger than others by calculating unique complaints per 1,000 rental units. The study also looked at the average asking rents of one-bedroom apartment listings in 2018.

This year’s worst neighborhood was the same as last year’s, Erasmus in Brooklyn with 86.5 normalized complaints, down from 117.5 last year or 1,081 actual complaints this year vs. 670 when de-duped. Median rent for a one-bedroom is $2,140.

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More NYC real estate being bought by LLCs

By Maria Rocha-Buschel

LLC involvement has been increasing in residential real estate purchases in the last 15 years, a new study has found. RealtyHop, a sister site of rental listings website RentHop, looked at data from 2004 to 2018 in four of the five boroughs, as well as co-op versus condo purchases.

One of the key findings of the study was that LLC (limited liability corporation) involvement increased to nearly 14 percent of transactions and accounts for almost 25 percent of the value of residential real estate purchases in that time frame.

The data science team combed through records on ACRIS (Automated City Register Information System), information made public by the city government, to examine how the use of LLCs has changed over time. Staten Island was not included in the study because data for the borough is not published on ACRIS.

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Most 2-bedroom apts. in NYC unaffordable to current residents

ST buildings

In the 10009 zip code, the average asking rent is $3,610.

By Sabina Mollot

New Yorkers looking to grow their families should take note: Two-bedroom apartments located in over half of the zip codes in this city are unaffordable based on what those areas’ current residents earn.

RentHop, an apartment listings website that often conducts studies on neighborhood trends (from dog poop offenses to where there are the most rat sightings) has concluded the lack of affordability based on current asking rents in each zip code.

The study, released in July, notes that affordability is based on whether a household earns 40 times the amount of what a month’s rent costs in their annual incomes, which would mean about 30 percent of the household’s income goes toward rent. Some landlords require tenants to earn this much before leasing to them.

Using this formula, of 52 percent of the zip codes looked into, median rents for two-bedroom apartments were not only unaffordable, but they exceeded half the household income, effectively rent-burdening the occupants.

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Rat complaints are on the rise in NYC

East Villagers made 275 rat related complaints to 311 last year.

By Sabina Mollot

New York City’s rat population has grown in recent years, making their numbers roughly the same as 20 percent of the human population here. And as they’ve increased, so have complaints about the critters, by 10 percent, from 2016 to last year.

But their numbers (250,000 to millions in 2017) also vary by neighborhood, or rather complaints to 311 about the aforementioned rodents do.

RentHop, an apartments listings website that has tracked neighborhood rates of things like dog poop offenses and lack of heat in buildings, has, last month, released a study showing which neighborhoods have the most rats.

Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn as well as Harlem and the Upper East Side in Manhattan were the top three in terms of complaints last year, with 1,265, 865 and 731 respectively.

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Upgraded heat system leads to fewer complaints in ST/PCV

Stuyvesant Town on a recent winter day (Photo by Sabina Mollot)

By Sabina Mollot

There’s no question this winter in New York City has been a particularly brutal one, up until last week, anyway.

As always, this has led to some heat complaints in residential buildings across the city. As Town & Village recently reported, a study conducted by RentHop showed that on the week of the “bomb cyclone” snowstorm on January 4, the citywide average for complaints about lack of heat in a neighborhood was 39.5 unique complaints per 1,000 apartments (57.3 including duplicate complaints).

In Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village that week, there were 8.9 complaints per 1,000 units in Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village or 93 actual complaints (99 including duplicates). However, based on management’s figures, heat complaints have been decreasing in recent years.

This, StuyTown Property Services spokesperson Paula Chirhart said, is due to a few engineering improvements made to the 70-year-old complex’s heating system as well as nonstop micromanaging of said system.

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Almost all NYC neighborhoods are unaffordable to current residents, based on apt. listing study

In Long Island City, with a $3,300 two-bedroom apartment median rent and a median household income of $28,378, tenants pay 139.54 percent of their incomes on rent. (Photo by King of Hearts/via RentHop.com)

By Sabina Mollot

In news that is certain to surprise absolutely no one, New York City fared the worst when compared to four other major cities in a study looking to determine which cities have the fewest neighborhoods with affordable two-bedroom apartments.

Additionally, in New York City, the neighborhoods with the highest low income to high rent ratio were the Lower East Side, Williamsburg and Long Island City.

Upper East Side-Carnegie Hill was actually the most affordable to the neighborhood’s own residents with an average household income of $155,213 and average two-bedroom rent of $3,555. The median income for all of NYC is $55,752 with a 2.4 person household.

The study was conducted by RentHop, an online apartment listings directory.

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Dog poop complaints decline in ST: study

A dog waste bag dispenser at a Stuyvesant Town playground during a Dog Days event (Photo by Sabina Mollot)

A dog waste bag dispenser at a Stuyvesant Town playground during a Dog Days event (Photo by Sabina Mollot)

By Maria Rocha-Buschel

A new study from apartment listing company RentHop has found that Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village residents have seemingly become much more diligent in their pooper scooper duties in the last five years. The company examined the number of 311 complaints submitted about dog waste on the sidewalk and found that the neighborhood had seven complaints in 2010 alone but only one in every year since then except 2015, in which there were zero. RentHop data scientist Shane Leese said that the numbers for the neighborhood are lower than most of the other areas around it.

Although Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village and the surrounding neighborhoods saw big decreases in the number of complaints, other Manhattan neighborhoods saw increases, as high as 180 percent on the Upper West Side.

Leese said that both Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village and the Flatiron neighborhood have had decreases in the number of complaints this year, with the decrease in Flatiron being the most significant: last year there were 10 complaints and this year there have been two, for an decrease of 80 percent. The Gramercy neighborhood is doing less well with five complaints so far this year, a 400 percent increase from last year when there was only one complaint in the same period.

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Study: ST/PCV clearest neighborhood post-blizzard

An aerial view of Stuyvesant Town’s First Avenue Loop after the storm (Photo by Mark Thompson)

An aerial view of Stuyvesant Town’s First Avenue Loop after the storm (Photo by Mark Thompson)

By Sabina Mollot

In case anyone was wondering how Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper measured up with the rest of the city in terms of snow removal during last month’s “Snowmageddon,” the answer is that the roads and sidewalks were more ice-free than anywhere else.

More specifically, it got zero 311 complaints, according to a study by apartment listings company RentHop. In contrast, the East Village was the iciest and snowiest nabe in Manhattan, according to the study. The stats came from a 311 complaint count which was then adjusted to reflect the calls per square mile so that it wasn’t simply a matter of the biggest neighborhoods automatically being the worst offenders.

Shane Leese, a “data scientist” for RentHop, explained the adjustment seemed necessary considering that some neighborhoods in Queens which were two or three square miles long dwarfed many neighborhoods in Brooklyn, which then dwarfed many in Manhattan that were just a few square blocks. Additionally, the study noted that 311 complaints were not accepted while snow was still falling.

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Study shows far more heat complaints in East Village than ST

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Stuyvesant Town (Photo by Sabina Mollot)

By Sabina Mollot

In case you’re wondering how your building, or the whole neighborhood for that measure, compares to others in terms of heat complaints, apartment listings site RentHop has compiled a map based on complaint calls to 311 made during the last heat season.

According to its data on unique callers, Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village residents made a measly 56 complaints, in comparison with East Villagers who made over seven times that many at 396. The Murray Hill-Kips Bay area also had significantly fewer with 144 calls while Gramercy residents made 119 calls. Lower East Siders made 160, Chinatown 213.

The coldest New Yorkers hailed from lower-income neighborhoods such as Washington Heights in Manhattan (1,935 in the north and south sections) and Crown Heights in Brooklyn (1,382 in the north and south sections). But along with the East Village, another pricey Manhattan neighborhood where residents said they lacked adequate heat was the Upper West Side with a total of 629 complaints.

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