apartment market

We read with glee and expectation the Sunday Times article by Vivian S. Toy on landlords in higher-end apartment buildings offering incentives to prospective tenants. Could it really be happening? Could free rent and paid-off broker fees finally be the ascendant norm?!?

We counted five specific examples in the article of buildings where landlords were offering incentives, and then there was this one line:

Mr. Malin said a recent Citi Habitats search found about 70 buildings offering incentives. The owners of these buildings, he said, “are doing what they can to make their property stand out from another property across the street.”

That's 70 buildings among hundreds. That's not that much. But that's certainly something.

Does anyone know of any specific buildings offering tenant incentives?

I wrote in this week's paper about how, even after all the calamitous economic news (like Bear Stearns' collapse), Manhattan rents appear buoyant if not strong. Most of the average rents I cited were for one-bedroom apartments.  read more »

Though the strength of the Euro has been largely credited with staving off a housing market nosedive in Manhattan, it is hitting expatriate American businessmen (and the multi-national companies they work for) stationed in cities like London, Hong Kong and Moscow hard, pushing already expensive rents into the stratosphere, according to Forbes’ survey of the most expensive international rental markets.

Mercer Human Resource Consulting checked out the median rent of Class A, unfurnished apartments, in high-end neighborhoods of commercial hubs around the globe and adjusted them from local currencies to the dollar. The “results spell trouble for businesses dealing in (greenbacks).”

Hong Kong, which ranked No. 1 in the survey, saw the median monthly rent rise from $4,898 to $6,398 between 2006 and 2007, when adjusted to the dollar. Tokyo was the second priciest market with a median rent of $4,102 per month. With a $1,000 rent increase year-over-year, Moscow ranked third, matching the $4,000 median rent in New York--the fourth most-expensive rental market. London rounded out the top five at $3,889.  read more »

Chelsea's rental market remains one of the most expensive in Manhattan, according to the Real Estate Group's 2007 year-end report, but some apartment sizes weathered an erratic year better than others.

Daniel Baum, the group's COO, told The Observer what most suprised him in the 2007 data was Chelsea's resiliency.  read more »

Good news for apartment hunters: Manhattan rents have dropped, especially in the financial district.

Granted, the average asking rent for apartments below 100th Street dropped by less than 1 percent in December, according to a new report from the The Real Estate Group's, but that downward trend is expected to continue into the new year.  read more »