If you’ve ever tried apartment hunting post-pandemic restrictions, you’ll know it’s no easy task. The inflation that hit the housing market not only made housing inaccessible for many, but also seemed to lower the quality of many rentals. For instance, 2022 had one of the highest levels of construction in half a century; there was an increased demand for housing across the country, according to RentCafe. With increased construction came decreased living space. In RentCafe’s list of cities with the smallest apartment sizes, Jersey City ranked 12th.  

Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan made the top five in this ranking, with average apartment sizes as small as 681 square feet.  

“From the need for more space in 2020 to the need for more homes in 2022, the rising demand for rentals is affecting the size of newly built apartments. In fact, in 2022, the average apartment size was 887 square feet. That’s 54 square feet less than 10 years ago, when rentals measured 941 square feet, on average. But the sharpest drop in one year was in 2022, when the average size went from 917 to 887 — a difference of 30 square feet,” wrote Adina Dragos in the press release.