Bidding wars come to NYC’s rental market as prices surge

New York is back, baby — and so are its notoriously high costs of living.

As offices reopen and locals return from their pandemic hideouts, a number of bidding wars for rental units have begun driving record-high rents even higher.

In March, an Upper East Side studio at 414 E. 88th St. listed by Triplemint’s Joan Kagan and Rachel Zack for $1,950 per month — specifically, a fifth-floor walk-up whose kitchen doesn’t have an oven — ultimately leased for $2,100 following a bidding war between three interested tenants.

A month earlier, a duplex in a Prospect Heights townhouse that the Corcoran Group listed for $7,250 saw a bidding war boost its final price to $9,000. In February, Corcoran also listed a $6,000-per-month West Village duplex carriage house, which received more than 200 inquiries and 15 offers. The landlord accepted a $7,100 deal three days after listing the home.

While bidding wars have become common in NYC’s sales market, showdowns for rental units in the middle market is a new phenomenon.

Today’s rental market strays far from that of the first quarter of 2021, defined by flatlined housing demand — and median rents in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens continuing their descent to record lows.

In February 2022, however, net-effective median rents in Manhattan, Brooklyn and northwest Queens surged, while the number of listed apartments in all three areas plummeted, according to the latest Douglas Elliman tallies.

And that month, amid the high demand and low supply, the share of rental bidding wars soared in all three regions, reaching dramatic heights that industry sources told The Post they’ve never seen.

In February, 17.7% of all listed Manhattan rentals went into a bidding war, up from a comparatively normal 0.9% last February.

In Brooklyn, it grew to 19% of all rentals, up from 0.7% the previous February — while in Queens, it increased to 9.6% from 0.3% year-over-year.

“It’s not just the high end that’s seeing bidding wars, we’re seeing [them] everywhere, and that’s because inventory has fallen significantly — in the last six months especially,” appraiser Jonathan Miller, who compiled the Elliman report, told The Post, adding it’s a by-product of excess housing inventory burning off in a short span of time. “The levels that we’re seeing now are unprecedented.”

It was an awakening for Lindsey E., a 35-year-old advertising-industry professional, who declined to give her full name for privacy. For the past three years, she had been living in a Crown Heights one-bedroom, where she was able to talk her rent down to…