rentals

From a new report (PDF) by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the National Low Income Housing Coalition:

According to the most recent Census numbers, in the past year, the number of renter households in the United States increased by nearly 1 million. By contrast, the number of homeowner households increased by just 139,000. The ability for metropolitan area housing markets to accommodate this shift to rental will vary considerably.  read more »

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A totally anecdotal tale we've had with us all day:

We were walking out of our apartment building in Morningside Heights (the area around Columbia University) on Sunday when we encountered a crowd of roughly 20 people streaming into and out of a first-floor apartment. They were young and eager...

And merely the first clump of people we encountered, for outside, spilled onto the sidewalk were another 20 or so people. They were waiting to view the apartment up for lease.

That's right: 40 people, 1 apartment.  read more »

The vacancy rate for larger Manhattan apartment buildings has dropped to near 2 percent and should remain there or lower for the next several months, according to a new report from investment-sales firm Marcus & Millichap. The report covered market-rate buildings with at least 40 apartments.

Reasons for the tighter vacancy rates are familiar: a strong local economy creates new jobs, which creates the need for places for people to live. The report forecasts that 36,000 jobs will have been created in Manhattan this year, a 1.5 percent increase from last year.  read more »

The Speyers are pulling out all the stops to lease Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village apartments at market-rate rents.

The leasing office there is offering a free, all-inclusive trip to Cabo San Lucas to the broker who closes the most deals at the mega-complex, according to a report from brokerage The Real Estate Group. The five runners-up each win an iPhone.

Believe it or not, rents are going down in Manhattan.

At least that is what a report from The Real Estate Group is saying. In their August 2007 Manhattan Rental Market Report, the brokerage states that, after a peak this summer, rents are down boroughwide.

And the neighborhood where one-bedrooms had the steepest decline? Soho. In July, you would be paying close to $3,800 for a one-bedroom in a non-doorman building in the trendy neighborhood. Now, rentals are available for about $3,400.

According to the report, landlords are not reducing rents to deal with increasing vacancy. Rather, they are offering to pick up all or part of an apartment’s broker fee. Well, that is nice of them.

The full release about the report is after the jump.  read more »

BlackRock is in contract to purchase a rental building at 530 Park Avenue for $211 million, a source familiar with the deal said.

The building sold for $1.51 million per rental unit, one of the most expensive per-unit sales ever. The 19-story rental is at the corner of 61st Street and has 139 apartments.  read more »

A moment of silence for the apartment hunters, please. By the end of the year, vacancy rates for apartments in Manhattan will dip below 2 percent, according to a new report from Marcus & Millichap, an investment-sales firm that doesn’t broker rentals in the city. This would be the lowest vacancy rate since 2000’s 1.2 percent.  read more »