Apartments for Rent on Long Island's North Shore: Rents by Town and Where to Look

Rental homes are a minority on the North Shore: in every place in the table below, owner-occupied units outnumber renter-occupied ones. That shapes the search: supply is thin, and the numbers below show where it concentrates. The wider set of guides is on the renting hub.

What rent looks like by town

The Census Bureau’s ACS 2020–2024 5-year estimates put median gross rent between $2,127 and $3,408 a month across the North Shore places in this set. The table lists each place from lowest to highest rent, with the count of renter-occupied homes out of all occupied units. Pull the figures yourself from Census Reporter’s ACS tables.

Read these as ranges. Each estimate carries a margin of error, and small places carry wide ones: Sea Cliff’s rent has a margin of $283, Roslyn Heights $945 and Syosset $2,008. A $2,315 median in Sea Cliff is the midpoint of the survey sample, not the price of any one listing.

Where renters are concentrated

Glen Cove holds the deepest rental stock in the set, with 5,439 renter-occupied homes, against 5,656 owner-occupied. Oyster Bay is next at 1,189 renter-occupied homes of 2,860. Jericho has 879 and Roslyn has 514. At the other end, Roslyn Harbor has 17 renter-occupied homes out of 319 occupied units, and Roslyn Heights, despite the highest median rent, has 235 of 2,174.

Village-level detail is in the Sea Cliff guide, where 402 of 1,769 occupied homes are rented, and in the Glen Cove guide. Roslyn Gardens, a 217-unit development off Warner Avenue built in the late 1940s with FHA Title 608 funding, was the first major rental housing development built in the New York metro area under Title 608’s then-new provisions. The Village of Roslyn itself had 2,988 residents at the 2020 census.

How to find an apartment on Long Island

New York HousingSearch.gov is a free public service provided by state Homes and Community Renewal. Long Island Housing Services points renters to it and to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s rental assistance listings.

Check who owns the property before you apply. A renter can verify who owns a property by checking with the right county office, and should find out whether the home is a foreclosure. If you want the full picture on lease and eviction rules once you find a place, read tenant rights in New York and the guide to security deposits.

What a renter meets at signing

Money questions come up before the keys do. The Attorney General’s Residential Tenants’ Rights Guide sets four limits worth knowing before you apply.

• A security deposit is limited to no more than one month’s rent.
• An oral lease for more than one year cannot be legally enforced.
• A fee-charging apartment listing service may not charge more than one month’s rent, and the fee must be held in an escrow account.
• Charging a prospective tenant “key money” above the lawful rent and security deposit is illegal.

Test a landlord’s first request for money against these limits and the scam signs below.

Spotting a rental scam

Legitimate landlords do not ask renters to wire money to any account, especially one located abroad, according to Long Island Housing Services. Two signs point to a scam:

• The landlord wants a security deposit or first month’s rent before you have met or signed a lease.
• The landlord or agent says they cannot or will not meet you in person.