Rents will not go down if there was more supply; more supply would just get filled up. The pandemic rents was an unique event that can't be replicated unless there is a large, sustained exodus.

New supply would be luxury anyway, it is not worth it for developers anywhere in NYC to build "affordable" housing for anyone making less than 150k or so. Housing isn't built "to house people". They are built as investment vehicles. Manhattan is for transients, the rich, or rent stabilized. It is what it is. The reality is that the current market supports high rents. And there is no reason to believe, unless theres another catastrophic event, that the market won't continue to support even higher rents, ad infinitum. As I have said earlier in the thread, landlords and management companies know what they are doing way more than any of us. If a 1 bed is priced at 5k, it's because they KNOW FOR A FACT someone will rent it at 5k.