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What is an empty apartment actually costing you?
At the June 2026 Brooklyn median of $4,350 a month, a vacant unit loses about $143 a day and $1,000 a week in rent you can never bill for. At the Manhattan median of $5,295 it is roughly $174 a day. Adjust the sliders for your own units.
Your numbers
Defaults are the June 2026 Brooklyn median signed-lease rent and the current citywide median days on market.
NYC median is currently about 5 weeks with representation.
What the vacancy costs
- Lost rent per day
- $143
- Lost rent per week
- $1,001
- Cost of leasing at the market median (37 days)Manhattan & Brooklyn signed-lease median, Douglas Elliman / Miller Samuel, June 2026
- $5,292
- What the extra 5 days above the median cost youAsk your brokerage to account for this number, not to explain it away
- $715
- One point of annual vacancy, this unit line1% of a full year's rent across these units
- $522
At $4,350/month, every week your unit sits empty costs $1,001. Getting to a signed lease two weeks sooner is worth $2,002 — which is why asking price and photography matter more than almost anything else you can control.
Straight-line estimate for planning only. Excludes concessions, utilities, turnover costs and financing carry, all of which push the true cost of a vacancy higher. Rent benchmark and the 37-day median: Douglas Elliman / Miller Samuel signed-lease data, June 2026.
How to read it
Time on market is the number that dominates
Every other cost around a turnover shows up on an invoice, so it gets scrutinized. Vacancy never does — it is rent that simply never arrives, and it is almost always the largest number involved. Two weeks either way is usually worth more than everything else on the turnover budget combined.
How much does a vacant apartment cost per day in NYC?
Divide the annual rent by 365. At the Brooklyn median of $4,350 a month, that is about $143 a day. At the Manhattan median of $5,295, about $174 a day. Both figures are signed-lease medians from Douglas Elliman / Miller Samuel for June 2026.
How much does it cost to list an apartment on StreetEasy as an owner?
StreetEasy charges owners $249–$299 per two-week block for a For-Rent-By-Owner listing, renewable in two-week increments, non-refundable. Agents post on a tiered rate of $7–$22/day charged only while the listing is active, with billing stopping once the listing goes to “In Contract” or “Rented”.
So an owner listing directly pays roughly $18 to $21 a day for the same placement a brokerage gets from $7.
What counts as a normal time to lease in NYC right now?
36–37 days was the median in Manhattan and Brooklyn as of June 2026, down about 30% year over year. Use five weeks as your baseline. If a unit passes eight weeks, the cause is almost always asking price or photography.
What actually makes a unit lease faster?
Three things, in order. Asking price against what has genuinely signed nearby in the last sixty days — not what is asking. Photography, because on StreetEasy your unit gets about a second in a grid of thumbnails. And response time, because a renter who has to wait until Monday for a showing has already toured four other apartments on Saturday.
Everything else — amenity lists, listing copy, staging — matters at the margin. Those three set the outcome.
Rent benchmarks: Douglas Elliman / Miller Samuel, June 2026. Listing costs: StreetEasy published rates, August 2026. Estimates are straight-line and exclude concessions, utilities, turnover costs and financing carry.
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