Apartment rentals New York with Lower Manhattan Apartment Listings

20 Exchange Place's stylized facade with architectural grotesques.

Even though it boasts one of the most distinctive skylines in the world, Manhattan didn't get that way over night. One of its most cherished pre-war architectural styles, Art Deco, is well-represented with distinguished examples such as the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building. These Financial District luxury rentals offer pre-war flair with plenty of modern conveniences.

Full of creative celebrities and lined with Manhattan’s last remaining cobblestone streets — not to mention a world-renowned film festival — Tribeca’s luxury rentals offer plenty of style in one of the city’s coolest neighborhoods.

City Comptroller John Liu released a report last Wednesday stating that rising rents are increasingly putting pressure on middle-class families. The new report showed that half of all city households typically spend more than 30% of their income on rent alone, compared to 26% nationally. Rent becomes officially unaffordable when it goes over 30%, according to federal benchmarks. Middle-income apartment renters, defined as people earning between $35,000 and $75,000 annually, face the most pressure in Manhattan, where 45% pay rent that falls into the officially unaffordable bracket. This high rent is unfortunately not unique to Manhattan apartments however. Rents have also been creeping up in Staten Island and Queens, where 44% of the middle-class residents are shouldering unaffordable housing costs.

New York City, ever known for taking the real estate and rental advice from the rest of America and throwing it out the window, is now going through a more unexpected demographic change. When we think of who actually rents luxury rentals, the first group that comes to mind is usually investment bankers, mainly those in their 20s and 30s who fill the tangled streets of Lower Manhattan early in the morning and seemingly beat rush hour both to and from work. That was true until recently, and while financiers still comprise the largest portion of renters, they no longer form the majority that they used to be. Instead, an eclectic tech-savvy generation has usurped traditional business, and in turn, the rental market.

The first rule of Manhattan real estate -- of real estate in general -- is said to be "location, location, location." Which, as conventional wisdom goes, isn't the silliest thing in the world. But Manhattan real estate observers could be forgiven, in recent years, for believing that at least one of those "location"'s could be swapped out for "branding." New Manhattan neighborhoods are nothing new -- New York City is a study in flux, and all it takes is one zoning decision and a few bold luxury rental developers to turn a neighborhood like the nowheresville around the Lincoln Tunnel entrance into "The Linc," a newly branded neighborhood complete with its own green luxury rental listings and superstar new rental developments such as Emerald Green. What sets Hudson Square apart from The Linc, besides a much cooler name -- The Linc? You're sure about that? -- is that this new neighborhood is actually one of Manhattan's oldest neighborhood. Hudson Square is, for all intents and purposes, West Soho. And it's not exactly "new," either, given that it has been around for centuries -- the Ear Inn, one of Manhattan's oldest nightspots, is a Hudson Square landmark -- and was Manhattan's printing district back when Manhattan had things like printing districts. But a recent re-branding campaign has helped Hudson Square re-make itself as one of the hotter residential neighborhoods in lower Manhattan, and a new campaign to remake the city's streets into leafier, more pedestrian-friendly thoroughfares suggests that it's time for all of us -- those looking for apartment rentals in SoHo and those of us who just dig NYC real estate -- to give this old-new neighborhood a new look. So, yeah: let's look at Hudson Square.