Apartment rentals New York with Financial District

Here’s another sign that the Financial District is moving away from being a strictly business territory and becoming an in-demand residential community: a new 30-story mixed-use building is going to rise up soon at the corner of Nassau and Ann streets in the Lower Manhattan neighborhood. The new building, which is being developed by Ann/Nassau Realty and designed by SLCE Architects, will be ready for occupancy by the first quarter of 2014.

For New Yorkers, the refusal of rent-stabilization begs indignation, shock, or simply confusion. In the Financial District, apathetic responses to the option to convert units in eligible buildings to rent-stabilized apartments has become an unusual phenomenon. Up to 16 Lower Manhattan apartment buildings received tax breaks since 2006, requiring the apartments to be rent stabilized. Under the Section 421-g Program, the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development designated the Lower Manhattan Abatement Zone, defined as the area south of the centerline of Murray, Frankfort and Dover Streets as an area eligible for partial exemption and abatement.

Another Financial District office tower has been redeveloped into a residential building, and its 419 units are ready to hit the market. Back in 2010, MetroLoft Management announced plans to convert 116 John Street into an apartment complex, and renovations on all 35 floors are expected to be complete by October. Originally built in 1931, the 350,000-square-foot Art Deco building is keeping its exterior architecture and hallmark public spaces, but the conversion process will add new terrace doors at all setbacks and brand new windows throughout. Earlier this week, MetroLoft unveiled what future units will look like, with models in the form of studios, junior one-bedrooms, one-bedrooms with home offices, regular one-bedrooms, and two-bedrooms.

In recent years, converting office towers into luxury apartment buildings has been a popular way of freeing up rental inventory in Manhattan’s Financial District, especially since new construction has been so hard to finance. Metro Loft Management has led the way in this respect, and they've built their reputation on transforming business offices into high quality luxury rentals; they presently own nine converted buildings in FiDi. The 66-story high-rise at 70 Pine Street is their latest addition, and once it is finished it will be the tallest residential building in New York and the Western hemisphere.

The MNS rental market report for December 2012 is out, and with it come the kinds of numbers we expect to see in the winter months. You may remember from last month that prices hadn’t fallen in November nearly as far as real estate insiders generally expect them to. Part of the reason for this was extremely low inventory, which MNS, in addition to several key real estate industry forecasters, predicts will not change in 2012. But movement did slow down in December as people hunkered in for the holidays, and the numbers show a slight decline.  Throughout Manhattan, average prices for all luxury apartments for rent went down 1% from November rates. Certain Manhattan neighborhoods saw relatively large declines, while others showed very little. Still more neighborhoods saw increases in price, but by lower average numbers than the declines were. That said, prices in December 2011 are on average 8.4% higher than they were in December 2010, suggesting that the rental market overall is stronger than it was a year ago.