Nobody puts New York in the corner.
After a few tough years during COVID-19, a new report has ranked New York as America’s Best City of 2023.
When the pandemic took hold in 2020, many prepared their last words for the Big Apple — and many ultimately left.
But the city that doesn’t sleep also doesn’t give up. Its rebound has been swift, particularly in real estate and tourism, noted Resonance Consultancy, the global real estate and tourism advisement group that ranks US urban centers each year.
More than 61 million tourists are projected to visit New York in 2023, the report states. Up from 33 million in 2021 and 56 million last year, that number is creeping back toward the 70 million mark achieved in 2019.
Visitors are also arriving in style, with renovations to and expansions of JFK Airport, LaGuardia Airport and Penn Station — and they can choose from 10,000 new hotel rooms that opened in 2022, the study adds.
Down in the subways, the MTA clocked more than 4 million riders in a single day on May 17, for the fifth time in one month. These were the first times ridership topped 4 million since March 2020, when COVID’s grip took hold.
New Yorkers are driving the revival, too. The Manhattan median rent hit $4,395 in May, a record high for the third month in a row, according to Douglas Elliman. In sales, pending contracts were up 10% last month from May 2019 and the number of days that listings sit on the market was down 10% from that time period, according to UrbanDigs.
The rental market is squeezed in a vice of demand, said appraiser Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel Inc., which compiles Douglas Elliman’s market reports.
On one side, high interest rates are causing potential buyers to stick with renting, and newcomers to the city scrape up what’s left of vacancies on the other.
Tightening the grip, Manhattan’s population more than recovered from its COVID losses by last fall, a Placer.ai study found.
“The only thing that appears to be missing is people using office space,” Miller said.
But do New Yorkers need a report to tell them their city is the best? “Absolutely not,” said Lisa Chajet, an associate broker with Coldwell Banker Warburg.
Folks declare the city “dead” after every catastrophe, she said, whether it’s 9/11, the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy or COVID, to name a few from the last two-plus decades. But savvy investors know to get in and buy before New York’s magical healing powers send prices soaring back up, she explained.
“There’s a reason New York comes back every time,” she said. “Let the naysayers go to Florida.”