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Five boroughs / Housing intelligence

New York.
Find your bearings.

Understand your housing costs. Explore local resources. Compare options across the five boroughs, one housing decision at a time.

Plan your housing budget Explore local guides

Local knowledge. A clearer housing decision.

A useful place to start
5

Boroughs covered

10

Starter areas

59

Blogs and guides

3

Proposed indices

5

Interactive tools

8

Open datasets

A place to begin / Tool 05

Ten starting points.
Your own shortlist.

Explore a borough, add your actual monthly quote, and keep the options you want to investigate. These areas are starting points, not rankings or apartment listings.

Compare the same unit size and lease terms. Enter rent plus housing extras; transportation is compared separately below. Unpriced areas are not assessed for affordability.

Your shortlist

Choose an area to begin. Nothing is saved after reloading.

Bring the numbers into focus

Plan the move.
Understand the trade-offs.

Four calculators, plus the neighborhood shortlist above. Sample inputs are illustrative scenarios, not New York market estimates. Replace them with your own figures.

Planning tool

01 / Rent budget

Set a target from your gross household income and a percentage you choose.

Enter your figures to begin.

This is your selected budget target, not a landlord qualification rule or a finding that a home is affordable for you.

Planning tool

02 / Cash needed to move

Put the amounts you have been quoted in one place.

Enter your figures to begin.

A sum of entered amounts does not establish that a charge is lawful. Ask for itemized charges and review the official broker-fee guidance below. Do not enter the same payment twice.

Planning tool

03 / Rental cash-flow scenario

Stress-test an owner’s monthly operating assumptions.

Enter your figures to begin.

Before income taxes and appreciation. Include insurance, taxes, maintenance, management and capital reserves in operating costs. This is a scenario, not a return forecast or appraisal.

Planning tool

04 / Housing + commute comparison

Compare the cash cost and time commitment of two actual options. Enter your own route times.

Option A
Option B
Enter both options to compare.

Commute hours assume two trips per commute day. Costs use your travel budget and do not predict service reliability. Check routes with MTA maps.

Evidence before a headline

New York renter research.
Help build local renter research.

No New York Homzora survey findings are published. The three measures below are a draft framework for future releases. Survey collection is open; scores require sufficient eligible responses and editorial review.

Proposed / no score

NY-RAI

Rent affordability

Proposed share of eligible whole-home renters whose rent exceeds 30% of gross household income.

Proposed / no score

NY-RSI

Renewal sentiment

Proposed share scoring their likelihood of renewing at 7–10, among respondents with an applicable 0–10 answer.

Proposed / no score

NY-NDI

Neighborhood destination interest

Proposed share selecting each destination, among respondents naming a concrete destination. This does not measure market demand.

Read the draft release criteria

Proposed research version NY-1.0 uses calendar quarters in UTC and a voluntary sample of adult renters in New York City. Test entries and detected duplicate submissions are excluded. A repeated submission identifier detects retries, not every repeat respondent.

Each citywide measure needs at least 100 eligible answers in its own denominator. Any neighborhood breakdown needs at least 15 eligible answers in both the displayed group and its complement. Small destination cells would withhold the entire destination breakdown. A quarter must close before editorial review and release.

Affordability would use income-band midpoints, with sensitivity analysis for those assumptions. Room-only rent and missing income are excluded from that measure. The highest open-ended income band will require a documented treatment before any affordability score is calculated or published. An income midpoint can misclassify an individual household.

Renewal sentiment excludes “not applicable.” Destination interest excludes undecided and not-planning-to-move answers while retaining destinations outside the ten starter areas. Survey uncertainty does not remove voluntary-response or coverage bias. No index is calculated or released on this page.

Open data

Free New York housing datasets.

Two open datasets covering the New York security deposit statute and the 2026 MTA fare schedule. Free to download as CSV or JSON, no email required, with sources recorded in every file. View the datasets or read our sources and methodology.

Read before you decide

Six practical guides.
A stronger starting point.

Practical checklists for the New York edition. Open each guide here.

Planning guide / 01

Build a NYC housing budget

Start with the monthly total, then separate the cash needed before you move.

Homzora / New York

Build a NYC housing budget

A quoted rent is only one part of a housing budget. Use the same household and month when comparing options. List rent, utilities, internet, insurance, recurring building charges and travel. Keep a separate line for savings and unexpected costs so a target percentage does not substitute for a complete budget.

Write down three totals

  1. Recurring monthly housing and transport.
  2. Cash due before keys are delivered.
  3. Cash you would keep available after moving.

For every estimate, record whether it comes from a written quote, a current bill or an assumption. A low advertised monthly number can conceal a larger move-in requirement. Use the tools here to compare the same inputs across two homes.

Review HPD tenant resources for housing questions.

Published September 13, 2026.

Planning guide / 02

Test the journey you will actually make

Compare doors, travel times and transfers before comparing neighborhood labels.

Homzora / New York

Test the journey you will actually make

Start with an exact building entrance and your regular destination. Check weekday, evening and weekend journeys separately if each matters to your schedule. Include walking, expected waits, transfers and the trip home. A nearby station alone does not tell you how convenient a route will be.

Keep a short route log

  1. Departure time and destination.
  2. Service used and transfer points.
  3. Door-to-door time and accessibility needs.
  4. An alternative route when service changes.

The MTA map collection is a starting point. Check service conditions when you travel. Enter observed or planned times into the comparison tool; Homzora does not provide live journey estimates.

Published September 13, 2026.

Planning guide / 03

Ask better questions about upfront fees

Use an itemized written quote and check who a broker represents.

Homzora / New York

Ask better questions about upfront fees

Before paying, ask for an itemized statement showing each amount, its purpose, recipient and due date. Save the listing and written communications. Keep refundable funds separate from charges that are not refundable.

NYC’s FARE Act prohibits a landlord’s broker from charging broker fees to prospective tenants. Tenants may choose to hire their own broker. The details of who retained whom matter; the presence of a charge in a quote does not make it lawful.

Read the official DCWP FARE Act guidance, including disclosures and complaint routes, before relying on a particular arrangement. This checklist does not determine your legal rights in a specific transaction.

Published September 13, 2026.

Planning guide / 04

Use NYC Housing Connect directly

A practical starting checklist for the city’s affordable-housing portal.

Homzora / New York

Use NYC Housing Connect directly

NYC Housing Connect is the city portal for affordable rental and homeownership opportunities across the five boroughs. Start on the official service and read each opportunity’s requirements and deadline.

Organize before applying

  1. Review the opportunity’s household and income requirements.
  2. Check the application deadline and instructions.
  3. Keep information consistent across your application and supporting records.
  4. Track follow-up requests in the official portal.

Homzora does not accept applications, determine eligibility or offer priority access. Use HPD’s Housing Connect page to reach the service and its eligibility information.

Published September 13, 2026.

Planning guide / 05

Build a neighborhood shortlist from actual options

Use a borough and area as a starting point, then compare specific quotes.

Homzora / New York

Build a neighborhood shortlist from actual options

Choose areas you want to investigate, then gather written quotes for actual homes. Record the same unit size, lease term, included utilities and upfront requirements for each. A neighborhood name is not a promise about price, safety, accessibility or a particular building.

Use a consistent comparison

In the shortlist tool, save one option per selected area with its quoted monthly rent and housing extras. Filter by your monthly housing ceiling. Blank prices stay unpriced; they are never treated as free or affordable. The ten areas shown are editorial starting points, not a complete inventory or ranking.

Use official transit maps and an actual journey check to add context. Your shortlist stays in the current browser session and clears when the page reloads.

Published September 13, 2026.

Planning guide / 06

Read housing numbers with their context

Separate source statistics, assumptions and future survey findings.

Homzora / New York

Read housing numbers with their context

Before comparing two figures, identify the date, geography, unit, population and method behind each. Asking rent, rent paid by an existing tenant and a modelled estimate answer different questions. A borough is not a neighborhood, and a citywide result cannot describe every block.

Five questions for every number

  1. When was it observed?
  2. What places and households does it cover?
  3. Is it a median, average, percentage or quoted amount?
  4. How was it collected?
  5. What is missing?

New York’s Homzora indices are proposed here and have no published scores. The research panel distinguishes the planned measures and their draft release criteria. Official resource links below are external sources, not Homzora survey results.

Published September 13, 2026.

Go to the source

Official resources,
within reach.

Source links checked September 13, 2026. Recheck time-sensitive rules and fares before acting.

Transit costs and routes

MTA lists a $3 base fare for most subway and local-bus riders. Other services, reduced fares and fare caps need their own checks.

MTA fares ↗
MTA maps ↗

Housing opportunities

Go directly to NYC Housing Connect for the city’s affordable rental and homeownership application portal.

HPD Housing Connect ↗

Help build the research

New York renter survey.
Your experience matters.

For adults who currently rent a home or a separately rented room in New York City. Share one response about your current home. Please do not submit again if you have already participated.

We do not ask for your name, email or exact address in this survey. Responses are stored for housing research and available to authorized site administrators. Email signup is separate. Standard hosting logs may record your IP address; a temporary hashed-IP counter helps limit spam. No index scores are published automatically.

Research collection is open.

For shared whole-home rent, use the combined pre-tax annual income of the people paying that rent. For a separately rented room, use the income of the person or people paying for that room. Room-only responses are excluded from the proposed whole-home affordability measure.

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Stay close to the research

A clearer view of New York.
Sent when there is something to share.

Get New York housing research release notices. Confirm your email to join this city’s list. No release date or sending schedule is promised.

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Privacy policy: learn how Homzora handles survey and signup information.

Your email and role are stored separately from survey answers. This signup does not change subscriptions for other cities. Contact Homzora about your signup.

Practical housing reading

Explore shared household planning and housing data guides

4 new moving and household guides

Browse the city moving collection

Moving between our cities

What changes about your rights as a renter

Deposit caps, notice periods and cure rights differ sharply between the six cities we cover. Our relocation guides set out what you gain and what you give up, with every figure traced to a published dataset.

Read the moving guides