New York City Luxury Rental Blog Archives for June 2011

Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen is burning up these days as a host of new construction condo developments have helped the once warehouse-full neighborhood earn its status as one of the most in-demand neighborhoods in Manhattan real estate. Hell’s Kitchen is saying goodbye to old patches of cement meant for parking lots and boarded-up buildings that waste space, and those browsing Manhattan rental listings can attest to the fact that the new Hell's Kitchen rentals that have risen from those formerly vacant lots are very appealing indeed.

The Wall Street Journal traces the rise to popularity of this once-underdeveloped -- and poorly named: we, and you, should be calling it Clinton these days -- neighborhood, thanks in large part to a bumper crop of new construction luxury rental developments. And with these new apartment complexes comes a demand for more commercial business to move into the area; Hell’s Kitchen's future looks bright not only in terms of new luxury rental housing, but in terms of the commercial development that will follow on behind.

The Manhattan real estate market is a complicated thing, as any regular Luxury Rentals Manhattan visitor -- and anyone who has ever tried to find a rental apartment in Manhattan -- could tell you. But one of the most peculiar features of the ongoing turnaround in the Manhattan rental marketplace is just how much more quickly the market for high-end Manhattan luxury rentals has turned around than has, say, the market for $2500-per-month Manhattan rental apartments. Given that there are more people in New York capable of paying more modest monthly rents than there are those willing or able to cut five-figure checks on the first of each month, the turnaround would seem to be somewhat backwards. But this is Manhattan real estate, and the top-down turnaround has become both harder and harder to ignore and -- per a recent New York Times report -- even more pronounced in the early months of summer. The demand for five-figure NYC rental apartments has been higher than that for smaller, less expensive Manhattan apartments.  So, what exactly does this mean for Manhattan real estate?

Summer has struck New York City in in all its sunny glory: ninety degree days, Shakespeare in the Park, and a humidity heavy enough to peel paint at fifty paces. And as those with a sharp eye on Manhattan real estate listings know, the temperature isn’t the only aspect of New York City that is heating up. We here at Luxury Rentals Manhattan have been anticipating -- loudly and often -- the onset of summer sparking an upswing in the New York City rental market, resulting in a bump in rents and a drop in vacancies. As we’ve warned, renters have been paying fees and winning fewer concessions. But now a sign of the real estate market’s growing robustness has appeared that hasn’t been seen since the economic halcyon days: renter bidding wars.

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.