Apartment rentals New York with Luxury Rentals

“The Bowery! The Bowery! They say such things and they do strange things,” began an 1891 song. But what was once known as Skid Row, full of vagrants and artists alike, has over the past few years continued on a path toward full gentrification. Much has changed from the days of towering bank headquarters and performances by Vaudevillian legends. Progress, to be sure, always brings about change. But while many of the residents of luxury rentals in the Bowery see innovation as being productive, they are also fighting to keep the flavor of this iconic neighborhood’s past intact.

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 it comes to the ordeal of moving to a new apartment, most if not all of Manhattan’s residents utter a collective, frustrated sigh as they ponder the various inconveniences that go hand-in-hand with this undertaking. This could of course be due to the fact that in New York City a host of extra complications arise, whether one is moving into a new luxury rental or a condominium, including but not limited to: street-cleaning restrictions, regulations concerning the use of the apartment building’s elevator, and of course, the oft encountered, always dreaded narrow doorways, most often associated with pre-war buildings. As Susan Stellin explains in her NY Times article, moving has, if anything, become even more complicated, transforming what had previously been an annoyance into an almost full-fledged problem.

Rich people things: New York City is full of them, from the hundred different takes on seared foie gras to the chilly boutiques of Soho and so on up and down the market. While our media has done a good job of making sure that New Yorkers are up on the latest trends among very wealthy New Yorkers -- and we've certainly done our part here at the Luxury Rentals Manhattan blog, at least insofar as noting the popular renting-a-condo trend among the city's  star athletes -- there's a sense, at least for those of us still living in the actual-existing economy, that these are trends not worth chasing. Which makes it all the more appealing that, albeit at the highest of high-end price points, the wealthiest New Yorkers are now making like everyone else in NYC. Where most of us live in Manhattan rental apartments, the richest New Yorkers long turned to ultra-exclusive co-ops. Now, though, with uncertainty the word throughout the economy, New York's rich are opting to do what everyone else does -- and rent. Yes, they're renting the highest of high-end Manhattan rentals, but for the wealthiest New Yorkers as well as everyone else, renting seems to be the move. The reasoning behind it, unsurprisingly, is proof that -- at least when it comes to finding a place to live in NYC -- the rich are not so very different from you and I.