Apartment rentals New York with New Construction Luxury Rentals

The luxury rental market boom in Manhattan is just getting started. A dearth of new construction for Manhattan apartment buildings, severe lack of inventory, and high demand for luxury rentals in Manhattan virtually assures that prices will not only stay high or get higher on the top end of the market, they will likely rise for the lower end as well. Rents are soaring right now all around the borough, especially south of 59th Street. Desirable Manhattan neighborhoods like the West Village and Chelsea are setting records for high rents, but rents for formerly inexpensive apartments in Midtown West and the Financial District are also reaching new heights. Studios in Chelsea average $2,332 a month, while one-bedrooms in the West Village average $3,278 a month. Furthermore, newer buildings like 8 Spruce Street have raised the bar for luxury rentals in Manhattan. 8 Spruce in particular has changed the perception that renting is somehow less respectable than buying by offering luxury apartments that match the quality of condos. All over the city, landlords are responding by renovating their rental apartments to meet these new standards, so even though you may pay more for rent than you’d like to, you’ll get more in return.

In the Manhattan rental market in 2011, demand for rental apartments far outstripped supply. Both developers and lenders recognized that this pent-up demand made for ideal building conditions, which is why $2.9 billion worth of new residential projects began in New York City in 2011. That’s a 24% increase from 2010 according to data released by the New York Building Congress. Additionally, Manhattan’s slew of stalled construction sites - land controlled by developers who have obtained all the necessary construction permits yet have still halted work - has finally begun to shrink. According to the New York City Department of Buildings, Manhattan had 130 stalled construction sites at this time last year, and now that number has fallen to 114. Furthermore, the number of demolition permits issued in Manhattan rose from 2010 to 2011, so more developers are waiting to break ground. So all this new construction should alleviate demand in the near future, right? Not exactly. While this is undoubtedly a step in the right direction, it still falls well short of the kind of progress that would help bring down rental prices in Manhattan. If there’s a lesson to be learned from 2011, it’s that even rising inventory won’t slow down the Manhattan rental market, so we at Luxury Rentals Manhattan don’t expect rents to begin to fall in 2012.

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.