• A new report found that the median rent for a Manhattan apartment is $5,000 a month and climbing.
• Inventory has fallen as New Yorkers can't afford to move.
• Mayor Zohran Mamdani has pledged 200,000 new homes in NYC, but it's a lofty goal.

Renting a New York City apartment isn't for the weak.

The median Manhattan rental price for a market-rate apartment soared to $5,000 in July — up 3% from June and 6% from July 2025 — an August 13 report from The Real Deal and appraisal firm Samuel Miller found.

The record-high rent comes alongside a staggering drop in public market listings. Apartment inventory in the borough has dropped by roughly 4,000 units, or 39% year-over-year, as homes are spending far fewer days on the market and people are signing leases with fewer discounts off the asking price.

Last summer, rentals spent an average of 48 days on the market. This summer, it's 36. Shorter duration on the market is typically an indicator of tighter supply and higher demand, as aspiring renters snap up open units more quickly.

Finding housing in the city has long been a challenge. Business Insider has heard from single moms who moved in together to cut costs, side hustlers struggling to make ends meet, and retirees worried they can't pay to age in the city.

The majority of New Yorkers spend more than 30% of their income on rent, the threshold economists classify as unaffordable.

Prices are jumping as inventory drops

The rental market trends are largely in line with America's broader housing market. A 2026 report from the Harvard Joint Center on Housing Studies found that the US has a significant shortage of affordable homes and that rents are rising. Even so, vacancies for both expensive rentals and single-family homes have increased, as many families can't afford to move. This kind of market stagnation is also reflected in NYC, as the Real Deal report showed the number of new leases dropped by 19%.

The Real Deal report also found that, in Manhattan, prices are rising fastest for apartments with two or more bedrooms. The year-over-year median price for "luxury" units — those in the top 10% of the market — has jumped 31% year over year to $13,750 a month.

Downtown neighborhoods have the steepest prices, followed by the West Side, East Side, and Northern Manhattan. Listing inventory across all areas, however, has dropped about 40% in the last year.

To address the housing affordability crisis, Mayor Zohran Mamdani launched his "Block by Block" plan, which aims to build 200,000 affordable homes during his tenure. Business Insider has covered city efforts to convert historic hotels into apartments, construct low-cost senior housing, and repurpose libraries, office buildings, and city-owned property for homes. Increasing supply could help lower prices in the long-run.

The city and state have pledged billions of dollars to these housing initiatives and are also leaning on support from nonprofits, developers, and big banks to foot the bill.

The Real Deal report only captures market-rate units, not rent-stabilized apartments, which make up 44% of Manhattan's housing. Mamdani's rent freeze — one of his top campaign promises — takes effect this fall and will cap rents on those rent-stabilized apartments for one- and two-year leases. While rent freezes can help alleviate costs for (often high-earning) residents in the short term, the policy can cause market-rate costs to increase. A rent freeze under former Mayor Bill de Blasio lapsed for this reason.

• Andrew Tsao transitioned from a six-figure tech job to being an artist in New York City.
• Medicaid and lifestyle changes helped him heal after the switch.
• Tsao's first art show, "The Art of Surrender," marks his farewell to NYC before returning to Taiwan.

It took Andrew Tsao a layoff from his six-figure tech job, Medicaid-subsidized therapy, and a psychedelic session to realize he wanted to be an artist in New York City. His first art show ended up as his goodbye letter to the city he called home for 13 years.

The 34-year-old artist and life coach, born in California and raised in Taiwan, is based in Brooklyn and recently finalized his first art exhibition, "The Art of Surrender." The collection, displayed in T.O.L.K. — a Bushwick café and art gallery in mid and late July — served as his final homage to the city, as he returned to Taiwan on August 5 to complete the military service required to retain his citizenship.

Since the opening, he has sold his first four pieces at his first art show, two for $500, with the help of the coffee shop's owners, who did not take a commission. He was able to hold the show under his planned budget.

Yet, it was just a year ago that he started calling himself a part-time artist. During his time in New York City, he has worked in B2B sales, held multiple tech jobs at startups, become a career and life coach, and found his passion for art. All the while, he has had to learn how to afford to practice art in one of the most expensive cities in the country after his income fell from six figures to under $25,000 when he left the corporate world.

Tsao is among the many New Yorkers who have adapted how they live to keep up with the city’s high cost of living. Business Insider has documented similar trade-offs throughout our Cost of the City series.

From a one-way ticket to a six-figure career

After graduating from the University of Southern California, Tsao moved to New York with a one-way ticket and no job lined up. He worked in B2B sales before transitioning into the tech industry, where he became a product manager, earning over $100,000 a year at a healthcare startup doing opioid addiction treatment.

Then came the pandemic. Although Tsao's company had gone fully remote a few months prior, he was laid off on May 15, 2020. Frustration with the layoff led to Tsao taking steps toward entrepreneurship. He began coaching early-stage founders and taught them how to build websites without coding.

The career change came at a financial cost: Tsao watched his annual income fall from six figures to less than $25,000. He had some money in his 401(k) and savings from his tech career, which he invested in opening his own business. Although he could move back in with his parents in Taiwan if things got worse, the loss of financial stability weighed on him and made him reassess his priorities.

"It is true that there are things that could feel more heavy," like paying bills, he said. "I was able to really be clear with myself of what I need to really feel joyful and safe."

Tsao found that while the city takes a lot, it offers a lot too

Tsao realized his priorities were to have a roof over his head and access to affordable food. The trade-offs he made included going out less often, cooking rather than ordering delivery or eating out, and choosing longer subway commutes over Uber rides.

"It actually did allow me to realize that there's a lot of things that are really beautiful in New York, even if you're not having as much disposable income," he said.

Tsao concluded that New York City can be unaffordable and affordable at the same time.

He exchanged pricey concerts for walks through Prospect Park, came up with creative date ideas, and took advantage of the Culture Pass, which gives New Yorkers free access to museums and libraries. He shifted from buying books from Amazon to discovering the Brooklyn Public Library, which became his favorite place to read and find books.

"I found creative ways to really enjoy living in New York City, especially Brooklyn, on a budget," he said.

During the pandemic, he moved into a two-bedroom apartment with in-unit laundry, which he split with his ex-girlfriend. By the time he moved out in June 2026, the rent was around $1,300 each. He temporarily stayed in a sublet until he moved to Taiwan.

Besides rent, he budgeted around $150 a month for groceries and kept his art-supply costs down. Most of his materials were donated by friends or found on Brooklyn patios. Yet, he did pay $12 per bottle of ink and about $38 for Posca markers.

Healthcare was one of the biggest shifts he experienced

As Tsao's income bracket fell, he was caught by something else — Medicaid. After qualifying for the federal program, he began to receive both emotional and physical treatment, which he would not have looked for when working in tech and paying for his own private health insurance.

Through Medicaid, he began seeing a social worker at Le Santé Health Center in Flatbush for weekly therapy sessions.

"I was trying to separate my identity and value from productivity, output, and how people perceived me," he said. "I would not have gotten therapy if I had not been on Medicaid."

He also began to receive Medicaid-subsidized physical therapy for chronic pain in his upper-right shoulder, which had developed in 2020 from a combination of leaning forward at his desk and recreational bouldering.

"From a health level, it was the most abundant I had ever felt," he said. "That was really one area that the change in affordability didn't make me feel more constrained. Actually, it made me feel like I had more options."

A new beginning in art, and a farewell to New York City

Tsao found that what he enjoyed about coaching was the emotional guidance he brought to it. In 2022, he replaced his technical, no-code coaching with coaching for executives and people in leadership roles — $200-$250, hour-long sessions — which were his main source of income.

"I realized I liked talking about those feelings more than I liked the technical coaching," he said.

Tsao realized he "also wanted to live" what he was coaching.

This realization, tied to his period of personal healing and one psychedelic session, led Tsao back to art. During that session, he began picking up art materials and rediscovered his love of painting. Afterward, he began using art materials he had received from friends and carving out time to create while supporting himself through coaching. His mixed-media abstract work featured in the exhibition explores ancestry, Eastern and Western identities, and connection to the self through ink, collage, crayons, and colored markers.

This shift is what led him to his first art exhibition and now to the send-off for the city he lived in for 13 years. He will miss the city's pizza and diversity, but most importantly the vibrance of its people — from buskers on the subway to dancers in Washington Square Park.

"I think about the New York that doesn't really relate to things with price," he said. "I definitely do think about the concerts I've been to, the food I've had, the encounters at that. But most importantly, the love letter is everything in between. It's for the little pockets of magic."

• Americans aren't flocking to Florida like they used to.
• BI spoke with three former Floridians about why they say the state has lost some of its appeal.
• Affordability is a common issue among relocaters, particularly with the state's higher home prices.

Kimberly Jones was born and raised in Florida and expected to live in South Florida for the rest of her life.

But after COVID, Florida no longer felt the same. An influx of out-of-staters strained the infrastructure in Jones' area of South Florida, where new construction, crowded grocery stores, and traffic-jammed commutes became the norm. The flood of newcomers also drove up housing costs, making it harder for longtime residents to afford the place they've always called home.

In 2021, Jones and her husband packed their bags and moved to North Carolina. They're not the only ones who have fallen out of love with Florida. While people are still moving to the state, net domestic migration — or the number of people moving into the state from elsewhere in the country minus those moving out to other parts of the US — has steadily cooled in recent years.

There are a few reasons behind Florida's slowing numbers and waning appeal. For some, the state's tax benefits may no longer outweigh its rising cost of living. That was certainly the case for Jones.

"Our reasons for moving were multifaceted," Jones, 60, told Business Insider. "A major factor was affordability — the cost of living in Florida had gotten out of control. Prices increased for everything — homeowners' and auto insurance, and even for everyday expenses like groceries and eating out. Those costs felt particularly high in South Florida compared with other parts of the state."

The Joneses found a more affordable, more relaxing life in North Carolina

Jones and her husband settled in a small rural town about an hour from Charlotte. They now live in a custom-built lakefront home on 1.5 acres — the kind of property Jones said she couldn't have afforded in Florida.

Indeed, Florida's home prices have continued to climb in recent years. Data from Redfin shows that the median home sale price in Florida increased by 19% between March 2021 and March 2026, reaching $417,000.

With the state's overall cost of living rising, many people — especially young adults, like Jones' son — are finding it difficult to become homeowners.

"My daughter managed to buy a condo a few years ago, when prices were lower, and interest rates were still low," Jones said. "But my son has little chance of buying anytime soon; he'll be renting for the near future, like most of his friends — most of my friends talk about the same thing with their kids."

Besides more affordable housing, Jones and her husband are also enjoying lower home insurance costs, as well as cheaper groceries and restaurant prices in North Carolina. But perhaps the biggest benefit of all is that the lower cost of living has allowed Jones to cut back on work.

"My husband retired a few years ago, and I was able to transition to remote work," Jones said. "We love [North Carolina's] slower pace of life and the fact that people are very nice up here. My quality of life — my stress level, everything — has improved tremendously just from being out of what felt like a rat race."

Natalie Alatriste left Florida in search of a more like-minded community

Natalie Alatriste is also a native Floridian. She remembers a time when her hometown of Miami felt sleepier, and neighborhoods like Little Havana were still under the radar. Today, she said, the city feels transformed.

"There's a pre-COVID Miami and a post-COVID Miami, and the post-COVID version is completely different," Alatriste, 35, told Business Insider. "The cost of living has gone up, and so many people have moved in that traffic is always heavy."

But it was not just Miami's growth that pushed her to reconsider her future in the state. Alatriste said Florida's shifting political landscape was also a factor in her decision.

"In 2024, I seriously started thinking about leaving not just Miami, but Florida entirely," she said. "The state's politics became a turning point for me. During the presidential election, everything I voted for — the amendments, the candidates, all of it — went in the opposite direction."

In 2025, Alatriste moved to Shirlington, a neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia, that's roughly a 20-minute drive from Washington, D.C. She and her partner rent a three-bedroom, three-story townhouse that's about 2,500 square feet, and pay roughly $4,350 a month. It's still expensive, but Alatriste said sharing the cost with a partner makes it easier to handle, and overall, Virginia feels more affordable.

"My quality of life feels much better in Virginia. I don't feel like I'm wasting so much time or spending so much money just to live," she said. "I also have greater peace of mind and can breathe easier because I'm part of a community that feels more aligned with my values."

Karen Meadows wanted a more active retirement

Florida is one of the most popular retirement destinations in the country. It offers plenty of obvious draws, including no state income tax, warm weather, and an abundance of retirement communities. But for some retirees, like Karen Meadows, life spent at the beach or by the pool isn't enough.

"Many people move to Florida to retire because it's quiet and has a slower pace of life," Meadows, 62, told Business Insider. "But for me, I wanted to move somewhere with more energy."

In 2024, Meadows and her husband moved to New York City.

"It's funny because the first thing everybody says about our move is, 'Oh my God, you did the opposite,'" Meadows added, "and they're right."

Meadows sold her home in Panama City Beach and now lives in a two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo in Brooklyn. Though New York still feels intimidating at times, being closer to her kids and living in a vibrant city has made the move worth it.

Beyond training for marathons — including the New York City Marathon and the Boston Marathon, both of which she has run several times — she volunteers with North Brooklyn Angels and the food rescue organization City Harvest. She has also joined the North Brooklyn Runners Club and started a book club.

"I know I probably could have moved somewhere more laid-back, warmer, and with lower taxes, but I love New York," Meadows said. "I'm almost 63, and I feel better and more alive than ever. Life feels freer, I'm more engaged, and there's still so much to explore."

Are you a former Floridian? We want to hear from you. Email the reporter, Alcynna Lloyd, at alloyd@businessinsider.com to share your story.