“NO MORE APARTMENTS”… 200,000 Renters Riot as NYC HOUSING HITS ZERO

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]the report from Corkran on rents in Manhattan, $5,000 is the headline number, but even a studio, $3,848 a month is the typical median studio apartment. So, if you're coming to New York City and you want to live in a box by yourself, you're going to be paying an arm and a leg for the privilege of doing so because there are now only 4,000 active apartment listings across Manhattan, which is terrible news for affordability. And while New York's communist mayor can freeze rents and attack landlords all he wants, if we aren't building new homes for people to live in, which we aren't, things here are going to get a lot worse.

[00:00:45]>> If these walls could talk, I don't have money to like eat almost.

[00:00:50]>> They tell you the stories of renters navigating a tough market.

[00:00:54]>> We ended the year of 2025 with record high numbers. We didn't see the traditional dip in the winter which we're used to seeing. I'm still seeing bidding wars. I'm seeing lines out the door at my listings.

[00:01:07]>> Listen to what happened to Ma when he entered the city's housing lottery system like a year ago. But what happened?

[00:01:14]>> Um nothing happened.

[00:01:15]>> So nothing happened.

[00:01:16]>> The Bronx is becoming uh like they having a lot of new buildings coming up and they claim that they're affordable, but a lot of my friends say they're not.

[00:01:25]>> Honestly, everything's just going up, man. Like daily life here is going like it's very hard to live in New York City now.

[00:01:30]>> But now the thing that's squeezing the high rent from the other direction is nobody wants to move once you've got your apartment.

[00:01:36]>> I am I am grabbing on to this apartment.

[00:01:39]I am clinging to this piece of real estate and I will never move.

[00:01:47]>> So look at this. The most recent data we have 4766 active listings in Manhattan. That's crazy because New York is a city of 8 million people. And what nobody's talking about is if we're losing inventory right now, which is supposed to be the busiest time of year when landlords add inventory, New York is in for the worst housing crisis it's ever had. In fact, we're already on our way there with average rents in Manhattan hitting $5,200 a month for onebedrooms and over $8,000 a month for two bedrooms. Which means even if you're courageous enough to live with a random New York City socialist you met online to save money, you're still going to be paying four grand a month to live in a room you're too scared to leave because you don't know what your roommate's up to. But it gets even worse because you've got to leave at some point to go get things like groceries. And when you get to the grocery store, you're going to find more bad news like $10 milk and $10 ice cream. prices that are through the roof because of the insane fees and regulations on businesses here that make them impossible to operate. While at the same time, a shoplifting epidemic hammers our stores, forcing up prices, which means every time you buy something, you're subsidizing the criminality allowed by our revolving door justice system, which happens in apartments, too, by the way, because 50% of people live in a place that doesn't have government regulated rent. And when it's time for landlords to come up with extra money to pay their extra taxes, they've only got one place to look for it. And that brings us to the real reason we're about TO SEE A MASSIVE HOUSING crunch here. And nobody can stop it. At least they can't stop it when socialism's in charge. Because landlords are prohibited from raising rents to offset record low supply, which is happening while their fees go up. And if you're not allowed to raise rents and there's very little of anything, you're just going to have shortages. But it gets even worse because the lack of apartments we have means the sticker shock today is only going to get worse in spite of all these regulations as there are reports of renters LINING UP AND FIGHTING over the scarce number of units that actually hit the market.

[00:04:04]units where landlords are finally allowed to charge what they're allowed.

[00:04:08]creating a situation where people are essentially fighting over the small number of places that there are offering greater amounts of money than whatever the listed rents just to avoid having to go without a place to live or worse being forced to look for employment in a low tax state that has plenty of apartments, affordable groceries, jails that work, and a population that overwhelmingly voted for Trump. Yeah. uh you'd literally have to be out of your mind to want to move to New York City right now. But we knew this. We knew this a couple of months ago. And the reason we can't stop the problems we have today is because nobody in the past cared to do anything about it.

[00:04:50]>> If these walls could talk, >> I don't have money to like eat almost.

[00:04:54]>> They tell you the stories of renters navigating a tough market.

[00:04:58]>> Daily life here is going like it's very hard to live in New York City. A report from real estate company Douglas Eleman breaking down December 2025 prices puts the wallet crush into context.

[00:05:10]>> We ended the year of 2025 with record high numbers. We didn't see the traditional dip in the winter which we're used to seeing.

[00:05:20]>> I can't begin to tell you what a nightmare this is because in the winter what's supposed to happen to rents here is they're supposed to decline. there's supposed to be less market activity and places that sit on the market during the winter are supposed to come with a discount to incentivize them getting rented. But strangely, that did not happen this past fall and this past winter at the end of 2025. Prices stayed the same, kept going up, and that should have been a huge red flag because what that meant was we did not have anywhere near enough apartments. And that's because we're in a housing crisis. 1% of apartments are available citywide during any given month. And when there's record low inventory and landlords are getting hammered by the city, the only chance they can get enough rent to cover their bills is when something comes up. And if people are willing to fight over that apartment and outbid each other to rent it, landlords have no choice. We're running out of apartments. And as you're about to see, it's communism's fault that's happening. Own data says 10% of the housing stock is in financial distress. That's 100,000 apartments. For comparison, NICH has 177,000 apartments.

[00:06:28]Also, the rent guidelines board's definition of financial distress is literally your rent is below your expenses. I would argue you're in financial distress well before you reach that point. So, it's likely two or 300,000 apartments. And what I'm saying is a rent wow 300,000 apartments. So, remember in New York, you got a tale of two apartment markets.

[00:06:47]You've got the regulated market, which is what they're talking about here, which is now about to get hit with a rent freeze, 300,000 apartments, buildings all over town in financial distress, and then you've got the other half of the market where there are these market rate units, and those are the ones that people are trying to outbid each other for. Those are the ones that people are fighting over. And the problem here is we just don't have enough apartments. That's the issue.

[00:07:08]Once people get an apartment, especially if it's a regulated apartment that's about to get a freeze, they're never moving out. So, every time there's an apartment, once it disappears, it's gone forever. And now, this is starting to happen as WELL WITH THE $5,000 AND $8,000 APARTMENTS. What a disaster. And this is all happening because we will not build our way out of this because that would allow the private sector to come in here and get rich, solving the problems OF PEOPLE WHILE MAKING THEIR LIVES more affordable. YOU SEE, YOU CAN'T HAVE SOMEBODY GET RICH BY ADDING APARTMENTS to a market that the government has messed up, which is going to lower prices. Uh-uh. YOU CAN'T LET THE PEOPLE HELP each other. That's not how communism does things. And what's the result of all this? The result is if you want to live somewhere, you better be willing to fight for that apartment.

[00:07:56]You better be willing to pay whatever the landlord tells you to pay because he can only rent it once. And after he rents it, if you never move out, he's never getting another rent increase.

[00:08:05]used to seeing.

[00:08:06]>> In Manhattan, median rental prices surged 8.9% from the same time last year to about $4,700.

[00:08:14]In Brooklyn, prices climbed 10.2% to about $3,800. And this was in the winter.

[00:08:20]>> In Queens, prices jumped 7.6% to about $3,600.

[00:08:26]>> And people are paying. I think that's what's most remarkable is I'm still seeing bidding wars. I'm seeing lines out the door at my listings. lines out the door in the wintertime for the rents you see on the screen here, which are cheaper than what we have right now.

[00:08:43]That's wild. That shows you that we've got a major problem. And the problem is once you find yourself here, even if you tell people to come in and build their way out of it, that's going to take at least a year. But we're not talking about any of that. We're having conversations about free grocery stores.

[00:08:59]We're having conversations about frozen rent. We're not having conversations about doing something that would bring about long lasting change. Nope. The only programs we have are going to create even more of an affordability crisis because where does the money for the free grocery stores come from? The people that live in these apartments.

[00:09:16]And if you're going to freeze rents on these apartments and landlords can't make any money, eventually the buildings are going to fall down and end up in a state of disrepair and there aren't going to be any apartments.

[00:09:25]>> $3,800.

[00:09:27]And in Queens, prices jumped 7.6% 6% to about $3,600 >> and people are paying it. I think that's what's most remarkable is I'm still seeing bidding wars. I'm seeing lines out the door at my listings.

[00:09:40]>> Real estate agent Jenna Rascco says at the same time listing inventory remains low.

[00:09:47]>> I've been doing this for over 20 years.

[00:09:49]I've never seen so many tenants renew their lease, which is creating even more demand for tenants who are looking.

[00:09:56]There's just very limited product with only 3% if not slightly lower than 3% vacancy.

[00:10:03]>> Mayor Zoron Mandani talking affordability Tuesday on ABC's The View.

[00:10:08]>> Landlords are making 12% increase in their revenues. Tenants median household income $60,000.

[00:10:14]>> Wrong. Landlords as a group is not the right way to spin this. You've got some landlords who have properties in financial distress because all of the apartments in their buildings are regulated and they're not allowed to make any money. Then you've got others who have a mix of either regulated and unregulated apartments or have mostly free market apartments. Those guys are able to raise rents. So part of the market might be making money. Part of the market might be seeing record revenue, but then you've still got expenses. And this is not the whole market at all. We've got a tale of two cities here. But the mayor's right.

[00:10:45]People cannot afford to live in this city. Can't do it. It's not possible if you're making a normal wage at a good job. But whose fault is that? Is that the fault of the people who own the apartments? Or is that the fault of the people who look at these old dilapidated buildings and say, "Yeah, this is fine.

[00:10:59]Let's uh let's keep the neighborhood like this so that it looks a certain way and everything's four stories and yay, zoning and regulation, and we have the ability to build our way out of this, but we don't want to for some reason."

[00:11:11]But this actually causes another problem for the mayor because as he's out there pushing his free dayc carees for everybody, which is supposed to make New York a city that everyone can live in.

[00:11:21]Families have an even tougher time living here. Because when you see these new buildings getting built, all these luxury apartments, oh wow, so many apartments. Well, guess what? They're all studios. They're all onebedrooms.

[00:11:30]You might get lucky and find a two-bedroom, but it's very hard to find a three-bedroom, and it's almost impossible to find a fourbedroom. And that's where your families are going to live. You don't have families living in studio apartments. You don't have families living in two-bedroom apartments with a roommate in the other room to bring down the rent. It doesn't happen. So, families are really in a tough spot here when it comes to affordability. And they have no choice but to leave when their family size grows because there is not the physical space for them to be here. Which reveals another problem for our affordability disaster. We're out there creating programs. We're going to raise taxes to pay for all of it. And these are programs that nobody's even asking for.

[00:12:08]People are going to leave before they say, "Yeah, I'll pay 8 grand a month so I can get some free daycare." Like, come on.

[00:12:16]>> A campaign cornerstone to freeze rent for all stabilized tenants.

[00:12:20]>> You can do that.

[00:12:21]>> That's what the rent guidelines board can do, and we appoint every member to that board.

[00:12:23]>> It'll be interesting to see how freezing rent and all of the things that he has on the docket maybe inversely or positively, you know, reflect in the market. Oh, that was a very gentle way of saying that uh this is not going to be good for the market. That if you've got a supply crisis and you've got shortages of everything, the worst thing you can do is enable people who might be in an apartment already to hold on to that apartment indefinitely and never pay another rent increase while jacking up costs on the owners of these buildings, putting more of them into financial distress. by the way. And there's another problem because some of you might be thinking, well, okay, so you got some apartments that are a disaster.

[00:13:05]The law needs to change there because of these regulations that stop these guys from making any money when they need to pay increased taxes, whatever. But what about the free market apartments? Aren't those fine? If you've got somebody living in an apartment and they're paying six grand a month and it's lease renewal time and your fees went up, just make it 10 grand a month. Problem solved. Well, actually, you can't do that here either. And that's because over the last few years, the city has been experiencing a sort of citywide regulation, a city-wide communism, if you want to call it that, that basically freezes rents for everybody in a way that nobody's talking about. Listen to this. And it has a lot to do with why there's record low inventory. And this was supposed to help. This was supposed to be the cure.

[00:13:47]>> It is simple math. Low inventory, high demand equals high prices. And that's the main reason why it is so expensive to rent a place in New York City. Enter good cause eviction law.

[00:13:59]>> Good cause eviction was a law that passed two years ago in New York State that essentially protects market rate renters in New York City from crazy rent increases and not being given a renewal from their landlord.

[00:14:10]>> Renters who live in buildings protected by good cause are entitled to have their renewal if they follow all the terms of their lease, like paying their landlord on time, for example. and their rent increase is capped at 5% plus inflation or 10% which >> so no matter where you live in New York once you get in the door you don't have to hassle with this crazy market and that's why people are sticking around if you've got people right now that are living in an apartment that in a perfect world in a world of choices they would leave but they're staying why because they're going to get a 10% increase this year at a maximum if you're in a $2,000 apartment, your rent's going to be $2,200 next year, if you even find a $2,000 apartment. That would be like a tiny, tiny, tiny studio very far away from everything, if it even exists. But what you've got here is a situation where nobody's allowed to make money in this property market. And that does another thing that says to people that might want to come in and fight with the city and turn one of these empty vacant lots into an apartment building that, hey, you know what? If I do this, even if I succeed in building a building, and even if everything's a free market apartment, it stops being a free market apartment once somebody moves in. And that's got developers looking at what's going on here saying, "Yeah, I don't know if I want to come in and build anything. It's already hard. It's already expensive. I'm already not allowed to build something that is structurally sound and holds the maximum number of people that I can afford." No, can't do any of that. And then once you fill the place up, you're not allowed to make any more money and no one's going to leave because we're in a housing crisis. This is another problem that nobody wants to bring up. Because even if you cut all the red tape, if you got laws on the books like this, people are still GOING TO SAY, "YEAH, I don't think it's worth it."

[00:15:55]>> Lower. With the bill passed in April of 2024, there was a lot of push back.

[00:16:00]Those who opposed it said it would make rent prices in the city even worse. But new data just released by the platform Open Eglue shows a different reality.

[00:16:09]>> Before Good Cause passed, about 26% of market rate renewals in New York City were for increases of above 10%. Since the law went into effect, that percentage has dropped to 9.

[00:16:20]>> But here's the problem. If people are getting lower rent increases, when is the landlord's chance to raise rent?

[00:16:26]It's after somebody moves out. And that's why we've got the bidding wars.

[00:16:30]That's why we've got people fighting over apartments. That's why there's a lack of inventory at all. Look at this.

[00:16:35]Let's say you want to rent yourself a studio or a one-bedroom in the East Village, which is a neighborhood that traditionally in Manhattan had relatively good rents. What's this one?

[00:16:44]Uh oh. A $5,600 APARTMENT. AND IT'S A STUDIO. OH, LOOK AT THAT. AND LOOK AT THIS. YOU SEE THIS right here? You see this one month free? Rents up $200. It's got an effective base rent, but since there's a free month of rent, your lease is going to say $5,600. This is another way that landlords get around these affordability problems and these rent increase problems. And this is a game they've come up with, which they're allowed to do to raise rents even after you move in. Because if they give you an apartment and they say, "Hey, you're going to get one month free or two months free." The cost for living there over 12 months is a certain amount of money. But the lease since you got free rent says a higher amount of money. And guess what? When it's time to renew your rent, it's that higher amount of money that you're getting hit with on the rent increase. So, none of this has been good for affordability. None of this has helped New York be a city that everyone can afford to live in. None of this has freed up our housing market. None of these laws have had the intended effect other than taking away housing. That's all they've done, and nobody wants to admit it.

[00:17:46]>> Only 9% of New York City renewals are for increases above that 10%.

[00:17:50]>> Not every building is protected by good cause eviction law, though. Generally, the law applies to buildings built before 2009 and owned by landlords who have more than 10 units. Good cause does not apply to rent stabilized buildings, co-ops, or condos.

[00:18:05]>> New York is already a very highly regulated housing market.

[00:18:09]>> Property owners, however, say the policy makes things even more difficult for them. And they say the regulation only puts a band-aid on a much larger problem, which is the lack of inventory.

[00:18:20]>> Look at this image right here. Look at this image. Why is this building this tall? And then you have these small little buildings over here and then you can't even see these buildings over here. If we have a housing crisis, the obvious solution here is for things to get taller so more people can live here.

[00:18:37]But we don't do that in New York City.

[00:18:39]We look at our streets and we say, you know what, the rules say a building has to be four stories and that's what we're going to have in this part of town. And this is your problem. We will not build our way out of it. It's not allowed. And even if it were allowed, people would be looking at this and saying, "You know what? Unless a lot of supply gets dumped on the market and 10% or 5% plus inflation, whichever is lower, if increases like that aren't going to help me pay my increasing bills and my increasing taxes in a place that hates me and says I'm the problem and wants to just take away all my wealth and confiscate my building at the end of the day, unless all that goes away, I don't even know if I want to build here." That is the disaster that New York City has walked into. This will not change in a year. This will not change with frozen rents. They could pass any law they want. They could pass a law tomorrow that says no rent increases on any apartment for the next 5 years. And you know what would happen? There would be zero apartments because you know what?

[00:19:34]Nobody would move. And if an apartment did come up, it would be impossible to get because when it's empty, that's the only chance a free market landlord has to get their money back. They would they would charge 10 grand for a studio cuz they might never see another increase. I think it's a big disaster. What do you think? See you in the next