The unexpected benefit of renting an older apartment


When it comes to finding an affordable apartment, age is certainly more than just a number.

While popular for their classic architecture and original hardwood floors, older apartment buildings also offer another benefit: cheaper rent than more recently constructed buildings, according to an analysis of neighborhoods in New York City’s Manhattan borough by apartment search site RentHop.

On average, for every year older an apartment is, the rent is cheaper by $6 a month.

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While these savings figures may seem small, they can add up quickly in a city like New York. A 50-year-old building could be $300 cheaper per month than a newer one, which would equate to roughly a 10% savings in Manhattan where the median rent is $3,100, RentHop said. “Given that buildings can be decades old, this difference could be huge,” RentHop said in the report. The report was based on publicly available housing data and data from RentHop on prevailing market rates as of the second quarter of 2017. Well over half of the residential buildings in New York were built prior to 1940, according to RentHop’s analysis.

While this relationship between rent prices and a building’s age works when comparing units within the same neighborhood, the pattern did not hold up when comparing buildings in different neighborhoods, RentHop found. For instance the median age of residential buildings in both the Bowery and SoHo neighborhoods was nearly 120 years old, but the median rent for a walk-up building was nearly $1,000 more in SoHo.

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Consequently, renters looking for an apartment in a specific neighborhood may have an easier time reaping the savings an older building can offer than those who are looking at different parts of the city. Plus, price is only one factor to consider when choosing an apartment. “Obviously, this regression is extremely simplistic and doesn’t capture many of the physical differences between newer and older buildings (along with potential differences in quality of amenities),” RentHop wrote. “For example, older, pre-war buildings might have older plumbing or fixtures.”

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