Apartment rentals New York with Financial District

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.

NYC dwellers of long standing -- or even longish standing -- remember a time when the Financial District was, finally, just that: a place where finance got done and power lunches were devoured, and just about that. Restaurants were closed by dinner time, bars locked up after happy hour, and grocery stores were something that existed 20 or more blocks north. That old Financial District doesn't really match with the Financial District of today, which has become one of Manhattan's fastest-growing and most promising residential neighborhoods -- and, not for nothing, also home to what are, per square foot and despite a recent rise in prices, the least expensive Manhattan apartments for rent this side of Harlem. The grand buildings of the Financial District -- many of them luxury rental buildings converted from previous lives as the office towers that used to define the neighborhood -- are home to a bunch of impressive and impressively appealing Financial District rental apartments but the neighborhood itself is, as the New York Observer's Guelda Voien points out, increasingly home to a vibrant and well-rounded neighborhood -- one where stroller-pushing families comfortably share space with party-throwing twentysomethings. Not bad, honestly, for a neighborhood that used to be a ghost town after the closing bell -- and nothing compared to what the Financial District promises to become over the next decade.