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?

For the most part Manhattan remains a brutal market for renters this month, especially if you’re set on living below 23rd Street. But economic uncertainty has brought bargains (in the New York sense of the word) to some neighborhoods in the middle of a season when rents usually peak, according to the June rental report (PDF) released today by The Real Estate Group New York.

The good news is you can still find a market-rate apartment for less than $2,000 a month on the island of Manhattan, if you’re willing to live without a doorman in the borough's sleepier neighborhoods.

Average June rents for non-doorman studios were below $2,000 on the Upper East Side ($1,831), the Upper West Side ($1,968), Harlem ($1,287), and Midtown West ($1,984).  read more »

Rents went up all across Manhattan in April, according to the latest rental-market report from The Real Estate Group -- except for Harlem, where rates for studios and two-bedroom apartments both dropped.

Harlem remains the only Manhattan nabe where a one-bedroom unit costs less than $2,000 per month on average, according to the report, and about the only place where a two-bedroom runs less than $3,000.  read more »

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 »

Composer Philip Glass in the March issue of Details:

Q: I understand that in your early days as a composer, you rented a Manhattan loft for 30 bucks.
A: It was down in the Fulton fish market. I paid $30 a month. My friends paid $25, and they thought that I had betrayed the community by allowing the rent to be pushed up that high. I was deeply apologetic for having destabilized the neighborhood.

The Manhattan rental market reports are popping out this week (I covered an authoritative one earlier this week). They show what many already know deep in their guts and wallets: Manhattan is the most expensive rental market in the United States.

How expensive?  read more »

Only $111 separates the average monthly rents for higher-end apartments in New York and London, according to a new survey. New York's better apartments average $4,000 a month, while the British capital's average $3,889. But don't think the higher average daunts British tenants here: The dollar's at a 25-year low against the pound.

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 »

The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in a non-doorman building on the Upper West Side was $2,478 in January, according to a report (PDF) from brokerage The Real Estate Group New York. The average for a one-bedroom in a non-doorman building on the Upper East Side was $2,439. In doorman buildings, one-bedrooms averaged $3,549 on the Upper West Side and $3,534 on the Upper East Side.

Rents in doorman buildings in Murray Hill went up across the board in 2007 according to a report released today by the Real Estate Group New York.

Through 2007, average rents in doorman buildings rose by 11.5 percent for studios to $2,578; by 9.6 percent for one-bedrooms to $3,514; and by 10.3 percent for two-bedrooms to $5,190.  read more »