Apartments under $2,500 hard to find, fly off market fast on Long Island

At every apartment Megan Colozzo toured this spring, she said "something was off."

She saw a unit with a view of a parking lot in Mineola. Another was billed as a luxury apartment because of a washer and dryer crammed against a bedroom wall in Amityville. One, also in Mineola, was simply "a little gray box," she said. None felt worth the money.

"For a view of a parking lot on the highway — I guess it's fine, but for $2,800? That feels so expensive to me," said Colozzo, 26.

Colozzo was hunting for a rarity: an apartment that fit her needs for under $3,000 — less than the median asking rent in Nassau County and something increasingly difficult for many Long Island renters to afford, let alone find.

"We need more housing on the Island," said Gwen O'Shea, president and CEO of Melville-based Community Development Long Island (CDLI), a nonprofit developer and housing service provider.

Affordable housing, she added, "is extremely difficult to find."

Median asking rent this week was 

$3,233 in Nassau

and

$2,943 in Suffolk

according to CoStar

The median monthly asking rent was $3,233 in Nassau County and $2,943 in Suffolk County as of Wednesday, according to CoStar, a commercial real estate data platform that tracks market-rate, multifamily buildings.

Colozzo, an artist who works at a paint and sip bar, and her boyfriend, a tattoo artist, make around $86,000 combined. They were willing to spend up to $3,000 per month on rent, but that would have made them cost-burdened.

Renters make up less than 20% of Long Island households, and more than half are cost-burdened. That means they spend more than 30% of their household incomes on rent, according to a 2024 report from the state comptroller's office.

Colozzo was hoping to find something a lot cheaper than $3,000, which left her with few options that had fewer amenities, she said.

During her search, Colozzo messaged several agents on Apartments.com, Trulia and Zillow and toured six. She said she applied for one listed for $3,000 a month — the top of her budget — but was rejected because she, her partner and her father, who acted as her guarantor, didn't meet the landlord's income requirements.

"We each needed to make three times the rent, and I even had a guarantor, which is a privilege," Colozzo said. "Even then, we couldn't qualify, even though we could pay it monthly. That was really disheartening."

Finding a 'gem'

Apartments well below the median can be difficult to find because many aren't legal rentals and aren't listed, agents say.

Long Island had just over 1,000 rentals available below $2,500 as of Wednesday, according to CoStar. Most of those rentals were concentrated in Suffolk County, according to CoStar data.

On Colozzo's sixth tour, she found a "gem" for $2,190 a month — a roughly 500-square-foot one-bedroom apartment on the bottom floor of a house in Amityville.

She moved in at the end of April, and while the apartment is small, it's close enough to her place of work and to the train station for her boyfriend, who plans to take the Long Island Rail Road to Manhattan.

Cheaper apartments tend to move off the market fast. In April, an apartment listed for $2,500 or less stayed on OneKey MLS — Long Island's multiple listing service — for an average of just 25 days in Nassau. In Suffolk, the average was 45 days, according to data from OneKey MLS.

98% of the time, [cheap apartments] rent in less than a month.

— Wendy Sanders, of Douglas Elliman Real Estate

"98% Ninety-eight percent of the time, [cheap apartments] rent in less than a month," said Wendy Sanders, a real estate agent with Douglas Elliman Real Estate. "There's no reason for a landlord in a competitive market to keep a unit vacant."

Sanders said she got "hundreds and hundreds" of calls on a studio listed for $1,825 by a co-op building.

"I'm drowning," Sanders said. "That gives you an indication of how active this market is and how much need there is for inventory at that accessible price point."

These apartments are also few and far between.

In Nassau, the number of apartments rented on OneKey MLS for $2,500 or less stood at just over 700 from 2024 to 2025.

In Suffolk, the number of units rose by more than 200 over that same period, but one-beds dominated the market in 2025 and the number of two-beds dropped, according to OneKey MLS data.

Lower rent, more savings and options

When Long Islanders have lower rent bills, they can spend more, stimulating the local economy, and save, CDLI's O'Shea said. And higher rent can reduce local spending — a 2025 study from the JPMorganChase Institute, a think tank created by the bank, found that rent hikes trigger "immediate and sustained spending cutbacks" among renters.

"When individuals, particularly those in the working- to middle-class, have disposable income, they spend it in the local economy," O'Shea said. "That helps support small businesses."

I don't want to be pouring all my money into my apartment.

— Gene Ballex

For Gene Ballex, 34, low rent means he can save more.

The insurance claims adjuster said he messaged a dozen real estate agents in May in search of a studio for less than the $2,500 per month he was paying for a one-bedroom unit in Port Washington.

Ballex said he toured three units before finding one for $1,850 per month in Great Neck, which he will move into this month. That extra $650 per month will "go right into savings," he said.

While he could have afforded to keep his one-bedroom on his roughly $100,000 annual salary, Ballex said he'd rather save the money for retirement.

"If I can put away a couple hundred dollars every paycheck, I feel like I'm moving in the right direction," Ballex said. "I don't want to be house poor. I don't want to be pouring all my money into my apartment."

Both Ballex and Colozzo make less than the median income on Long Island. In Nassau County, the median household income was $146,202, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2024 American Community Survey estimates. In Suffolk, it stood at $130,686, per the Census.

Those wages may seem high, but renters often make less than homeowners. In the Town of Brookhaven, the median income of a renter was $65,100 while the median homeowner household brought in $128,200 in 2023, according to a report on housing affordability prepared for the town.

Colozzo said her lower rent means she has more disposable income for art projects — such as experimenting with clay — and basics like food.

"I actually have room to buy food that I want to eat, and not slop," Colozzo said. "I have room to do things that I enjoy. I have the time and the money to go to a concert. That's huge."

There's usually a catch — and sometimes a scam

Cheaper apartments tend to come with a catch, said Todd Romano, a licensed Realtor with Hampton Estates Realty.

"There's going to be a caveat with each and every one of them," Romano said. "Second floor; no elevator; basement in someone's house; next door to the airport — there's going to be something you're trading off."

While Colozzo did find an apartment under her budget, renters and real estate agents say the search is like trying to find a needle in a haystack full of liars. In addition to acting fast and being flexible with their criteria, renters also need to dodge scammers and root out anything that isn't legitimate.

Many apartments priced below $2,500 are illegal rentals, meaning they don't meet local building and fire code requirements, said Ed Kaleck, a member of the Rental King LI team of Bay Shore-based Ramsay Realtors. Added Justin Galbraith, another member of the team, they "don't want to get involved with that."

Many people rent illegal units simply because they have nowhere else to go, O'Shea said.

"Part of the challenge with the housing crisis is more and more people are leaning into illegal units because they need housing," O'Shea said. "And that has a cost to the community."

Renters also need to be on the lookout for apartment scams — where fraudsters post listings, often to social media, of photogenic units in order to steal money from renters, said Melissa Gomez, who serves on the board of managers of OneKey MLS. Scammers will often demand money before they let a renter see a unit — a massive red flag, Gomez added.

Long Islanders should never send money to an agent before getting a tour, she said.

Renters can confirm that their broker has a state license through New York's website, and can look up the legitimate owner of any building through Nassau and Suffolk property records, Kaleck said. And a legitimate broker will never ask you for more than $20 per person for a credit check, Galbraith added.

What $2,500 a month or less gets on Long Island

North Lindenhurst

In North Lindenhurst, a 600-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment spent just 11 days on the market before it was rented for $2,200 per month in May, according to the listing.

"If you have your ducks in a row, and something comes on the market that looks really good, you have to jump on it," Galbraith said.

The 1980s brick building sits off Sunrise Highway at the start of a residential stretch on 49th Street. Across the highway is a shopping plaza with a King Kullen grocery store and Five Below.

The apartment, just over a mile from the Lindenhurst stop on the LIRR, offered the basics: a kitchen with a refrigerator and four-burner stove adjacent to a living room with a central window, plus a bathroom and shower. Both the living room and the bedroom each hold an in-wall AC unit.

Russell Gardens

Sanders rented a one-bedroom in Russell Gardens for $2,395 in April, after the apartment spent less than a week on the market.

The apartment building, constructed in the 1950s, still has some of its vintage charm, Sanders said.

"The apartments are very generously sized and still have many of the original architectural details that you don't see in new construction," Sanders said.

The unit itself has hardwood floors and arched hallways. The building's kitchens and bathrooms have been recently upgraded, she added.

The property sits around half a mile from the Great Neck LIRR station, and has a laundry room and bike storage space in the basement, Sanders said.

It's "close enough, yet far enough to be ideally located," she said.

Miller Place

A $2,300 Miller Place apartment has one bedroom and a balcony.

The 1980s co-op building has a handful of units for rent by individual co-op shareholders and from the co-op as a whole, said Beth Hayde, a licensed real estate salesperson based in Port Jefferson with Real Broker NY who has rented four units in the apartment complex in the last two years.

This unit is on the second floor and opens out onto a balcony with a view of trees and part of the co-op's parking lot.

The complex itself doesn't have a ton of amenities — something that helps keep the price down, Hayde said. But it does have a laundry facility at the center and the unit comes with a dedicated parking spot.

The building also abuts a walking trail to Wading River and a nearby park, Hayde said.

"This is a really good opportunity for anyone looking for a good amount of space," Hayde said. "Not every apartment has outdoor space" like this unit.