In 2021, we may be able to rent a flat usually beyond our means

With the rich escaping the city and the young returning home, the price of renting has dropped, meaning I’m actually excited to move this year, writes Holly Baxter

Estate agents are struggling to fill luxury properties (Getty/iStock)

Our lease is coming up on 1 April and that means we’re immersing ourselves back into the New York rental market again. Back at the beginning of 2020, when “coronavirus” was a rarely heard term for the common cold and The New York Times Daily podcast was only just putting together its “Could a disease from Wuhan spread round the globe?” episode, E and I signed a contract for a very, very small studio apartment in a nice part of Brooklyn. Despite the fact that it only had half of one window in the entire place, no bathroom ventilation and a fridge that backed on to our bed, we reasoned with each other that we’d be spending so many hours a day outside that it wouldn’t matter.

Just a few weeks later, Covid hit New York with a vengeance. Our move-in day in April suddenly coincided with New York City becoming the epicentre and going into lockdown. Shortages of masks and sanitiser and a temporary ban on moving meant we relied on two cash-in-hand Russian blokes that our friend had met on a freeway once to help us transfer our boxes. We all had scarves tied round our faces in a vain effort to protect ourselves from a virus we knew nothing about.

“It’ll be a bit annoying during the lockdown,” I said to E, as we unpacked, “but absolute worst-case scenario says we’ll be working remotely till September.” Well, we all know how that worked out.