Apartment rentals New York with NYC Luxury Rentals

2012 was an interesting year for the luxury rental apartment market in New York City. New Yorkers saw rents for homes in the city zooming upward over the course of the year, while the number of vacant apartments in the market stopped to extremely low levels. But as tumultuous as these occurrences may seem, members of the real estate sector were smiling, as they could see that the market was not only alive, but it was doing extremely well too! With last year putting on such a good show, one wonders: will 2013 be able to repeat the performance of its predecessor?

The East River Greenway project, one of the newest attempts to provide further green areas within Manhattan’s East Side, and more specifically the Midtown East neighborhood, is continuing to grow in popularity. A recent poll, taken by the aptly named organization Friends of the East River Greenway reported that 73 percent of those living in the East Side support this new project, suggesting that it is getting ever closer to coming to fruition. Even with its expensive price-tag, this attempt to beautify one of NYC’s most historic areas is one that promises to make the East Side ever more popular as a place to rent luxury apartments.

When one thinks of the benefits of living in a luxury apartment building, one of those benefits is inevitably having a doorman. However, we at Luxury Rentals Manhattan have touted the benefits of not having a doorman in Manhattan -- and it seems the NYC real estate world has begun to agree with us. In the past two years, the desire for Manhattan luxury rental apartments in doorman buildings has significantly decreased. Perhaps the most obvious reason is the fact that New York City has been experiencing an historic economic downturn, therefore forcing many people to choose other, less expensive options. But this is not the only reason. The changing demographics within NYC, namely the increase of labor within the technological and creative industries who have different tastes have also played their part, causing a perfect storm of events leading to this dramatic decline in the desire for Manhattan luxury apartments in doorman buildings and possibly the beginning of a new trend within the NYC real estate market.

It’s not a boundary you’ll find on any map, but any Manhattanite will tell you that the stretch of 96th Street east of Central Park is one of the brightest and longest-standing borders in Manhattan real estate. With the ultra-prosperous Upper East Side on the downtown side and East Harlem on the north, 96th Street marked a long-standing class boundary as much as a dividing line between two neighborhoods. But, thanks in large part to a host of new luxury rentals on the upper reaches of the Upper East Side, the bright line along 96th Street is looking notably less distinct these days -- and two culturally rich neighborhoods have started to look more alike. Call it the upper Upper East Side if you like, but the changes along the northern part of the Upper East Side are unmistakable and undeniable. The Upper East Side, in other words, is moving uptown.