9 facts about the New York City housing market that will make you glad you live somewhere else

Rents in New York have risen to record heights of late. Manhattan rent reached an all-time high of $3,217 in the first three months of 2019, according to a StreetEasy Manhattan Rent Index report. An entire year's worth of rent is $38,604, more than three quarters of the average American annual salary of $47,060.

Read more: 11 facts about San Francisco's housing market that will make you glad you live somewhere else

New York is the most populous city in the US, and the majority of residents are paying rent as opposed to owning their own places.

Nearly two-thirds of residents in New York live in rent-occupied units, according to the New York City Department of City Planning. The number of people renting housing units in New York alone is more than twice the national average. Two thirds of New York's 8.5 million residents is still larger than all the 4 million residents in Los Angeles, America's second biggest city.

The average number of people staying in city shelters nightly peaked to a record of nearly 64,000 people in January 2019, according to a report by the Coalition for the Homeless.

That's 17,000 more than the capacity of Yankee Stadium, which can hold 47,309 people.

The coalition projects that the number of homeless people seeking shelter in the city will continue to climb to more than 65,000 by 2022.

Although the New York real estate market can be notoriously competitive, Manhattan homes actually end up staying on the market longer than you might expect.

Across all five boroughs, New Yorkers trying to sell their homes are facing longer and longer wait times to reach final sales, according to StreetEasy Market Reports. Manhattan homes in particular spent an average of 117 days on the market, the highest figure the city has seen in seven years.

The least expensive rents in Manhattan can be found in the neighborhood of Inwood at the northern tip of the island. But even there, residents are still paying $1,623 a month, according to City Realty.

In nearby Washington Heights, renters can find a studio for an average of $1,669, making it the second cheapest neighborhood.

According to StreetEasy market reports, there's only one area of the entire city where rents fell in the first quarter of 2018.

That would be North Brooklyn, where a surplus of property remained empty as an impending shutdown of the local subway line approached. Rents in the market fell to $3,061, a mere drop of 0.5% from the previous quarter.

Those rents very well may go back up, now that city officials announced the subway shutdown would be partially averted.

With fewer people buying and more renting, New York landlords have the upper hand, and are less likely to offer markdowns to prospective tenants.

In Brooklyn, rent cuts are down 6.7% from last year, according to a 2019 StreetEasy report. The trend of shrinking rent cuts is true across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. Rent cuts dropped to the smallest discount on record in Brooklyn and Queens, each at 3.4% and dipping close to an all-time low in Manhattan at 3.9%.

The total number of homes for sale in Manhattan increased 11.7% year-over-year, according to StreetEasy. Inventory grew across the borough, with Upper Manhattan gaining the largest relative share of new inventory at 18.4%.

NY1 reported in 2017 that 1.5 million New Yorkers were living below the poverty level.

In New York's poorest neighborhoods, many of which are in the Bronx, the homeownership rate is dismal — just 8.8%, compared to 50% for the rest of the metro area.