New York City Luxury Rental Blog Archives for February 2010

The Financial District is the oldest neighborhood in Manhattan, and home to some of the most beautiful buildings in New York City, but it's still in its infancy as a residential neighborhood. When the first luxury rentals in the Financial District opened their doors, they offered walk-to-work opportunities and... well, not much else. Since then, though, the Financial District has really come into its own. It's a 24-hour neighborhood now, with good restaurants and a nascent nightlife scene and grocery stores and everything else NYC dwellers expect from, like, a neighborhood.

Recent years have been tough in Manhattan real estate, as they have throughout the economy as a whole. But there's one ray of sunshine amid all the clouds, and it's shining right on those looking for rental apartments in Manhattan. The New York Times reports that rental apartments in New York City saw their rents increase at the slowest rate since 1994 over the last 12 months.

There was a time, a glorious golden era, when Manhattan rental apartments were as abundant as grains of sand at Coney Island, when new Manhattan luxury apartment buildings opened seemingly every day. Those salad days of Manhattan real estate weren't really all that long ago (and the sand-at-Coney-Island thing is obviously an overstatement) but those days feel pretty well gone at this point. The good news about NYC real estate, though, is that ambitious developments -- and the luxury rental apartments therein -- are something of a renewable resource.

The Manhattan rental market has seen its share of ups and downs of late -- or, more precisely, downs and ups -- but there may be some good news buried in the fact that, as Sarah Ryley reports at The Real Deal, several formerly dormant new rental apartment building developments have recently resumed construction.