Apartment rentals New York with Fourth Quarter Rental Stats

Spring, Unsprung: NYC Rents Once Again Way Up Over 2010, But Barely Budge Month-To-Month

Every month, the statistics on Manhattan luxury rentals tell the same story. Which means that just about every post we do on that topic reads pretty similar to the one before. At the risk of getting intolerably meta-bloggy, here's a quote from a recent Luxury Rentals Manhattan blog post on February's rental stats. "While increased demand should have led to a serious spike in Manhattan rents, it hasn't... yet. A pair of recent studies show that rents are up a robust 8 percent over 2010 figures, but rents are still essentially flat month-to-month, just as they were last month." You'll notice that "last month" links to another Luxury Rentals Manhattan blog post that says almost exactly the same thing. And so you see how this works, and has worked -- demand has stayed strong for Manhattan rentals, and is growing stronger as the traditional NYC real estate boomtime of spring approaches, but prices have barely budged month-over-month. That was the story in March, and it may yet be the story in April. It's the waiting for it to change part that has people nervous.

Fourth Quarter Comeback: Rents Up, Vacancies Down On NYC Rentals As Year End

Just because most real estate prognosticators predicted the NYC rental market's strong fourth-quarter showing doesn't mean that things went quite as expected. At some level, yes, the market for Manhattan rental apartments tightened in the fourth quarter, with the vacancy rate dropping again and rents reaching their highest mark in 2010. But while the ongoing rally in the NYC rental market -- which we've been talking about for some time here at the LRM blog -- didn't exactly sneak up on anyone, there's a surprise buried in the fourth quarter stats that's even more dramatic than the (admittedly lovely and colorful) charts above would indicate.