Apartment rentals New York with Harlem

321 East Harlem currently via Google Maps

A mixed-use tower is coming to East Harlem by real estate investment firm AvalonBay Communities. The tower is planned to rise 68 stories and hold three schools, retail space, and rental apartments.

For the second time in less than a month, HAP Investments has announced a new apartment building in Upper Manhattan to be designed by eccentric designer Karim Rashid. For those familiar with Rashid, his apartment designs aren’t too far off from his flashy products.

With many of Manhattan’s popular neighborhoods getting denser by the day, it is only natural that people looking for homes in the city are looking for newer, but traditionally overlooked, neighborhoods to move into. One such neighborhood, which has found many takers among the renters of New York City, is the quiet yet evolving locality of Hamilton Heights in West Harlem. With Manhattanville on one end and Washington Heights on the other, Hamilton Heights is in the midst of a revival of sorts, with people coming in to the neighborhood to make use of its low rents and great living atmosphere. The average rent of a one-bedroom apartment here comes to $1,600, whereas buying a townhouse would cost you about $1 million, a fraction of the cost of a similar home in Brooklyn.

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.