Renter's guide

How much do you need to make to rent an apartment in NYC?

There's no legal minimum — it depends on the landlord. A common underwriting convention is annual income of about 40 times the monthly rent, but it's a convention that varies by building and market conditions, not a rule. If your income doesn't clear what a landlord asks for, the usual alternatives are a guarantor or an institutional guarantor service. If you hold a housing voucher, an income requirement may legally be applied only to the portion of the rent you pay yourself.

There's no legal income minimum — but there's a common convention

No law sets a required income-to-rent ratio in New York City. What you'll run into instead is a landlord underwriting convention: many landlords look for annual income of roughly 40 times the monthly rent. It's a convention that varies by building, by landlord, and by how competitive a specific unit is — not a fixed rule, and not every landlord uses it.

At citywide, borough-level median asking rents, a 40× convention works out to roughly:

• NYC overall: median asking rent $4,199 → about $168,000/year at 40×
• Manhattan: $4,927 → about $197,000/year at 40×
• Brooklyn: $3,895 → about $156,000/year at 40×
• Queens: $3,350 → about $134,000/year at 40×

These are illustrations of what a 40× convention implies at a given rent, not a claim that every landlord will ask for exactly this. Your building's actual requirement will differ, and it's worth asking rather than assuming.

If your income doesn't clear it

The standard alternatives are a guarantor who co-signs the lease — landlords commonly ask a guarantor to clear a higher multiple, often cited around 80×, though that also varies — or an institutional guarantor service that guarantees the lease for a fee. See how guarantors work for how that actually works.

Vouchers and source-of-income protection

The New York City Human Rights Law prohibits refusing an applicant because of their lawful source of income, which includes housing vouchers such as Section 8. Where a voucher is involved, a landlord may only apply an income multiple to the portion of the rent the tenant pays themselves — not to the full contract rent the voucher also covers. Applying a blanket multiple to a voucher holder's full rent, ignoring what the voucher covers, is exactly the kind of practice the law targets.

This area of law is also, as of this writing, unsettled at the state level. On 5 March 2026, a state Appellate Division (Third Department) ruling held New York's state source-of-income statute unconstitutional as applied to Section 8 vouchers; the state Attorney General appealed on 2 April 2026. That ruling concerned the state provision — New York City's own source-of-income law was not struck down and Section 8 discrimination protections remain in effect within the five boroughs. If you hold a voucher and run into a refusal, that's worth raising with the NYC Commission on Human Rights or a housing attorney rather than assuming the rules have changed.

Ready to look?

See what's available this week