New York City Luxury Rental Blog

“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.

Since a renaming campaign that began in over 50 years ago, some things have officially come off the menu in Hell’s Kitchen—grit and squalor, gang bivouacs, dire poverty. In 1959, the Manhattan neighborhood stretching from 34th to 59th Street west of 8th Avenue attempted an image makeover when grisly gang violence took the life of two young boys and generated waves of negative media coverage. That year it was alternatively named Clinton—but not unanimously. 

Artists and residents in the community have argued name-politics since the beginning. Where HK has a plucky cachet, Clinton rolls of the tongue with glass sterility. Is the neighborhood a niche for Bohemians, or young urban professionals? Is graffiti art or blight? Are high-rises the future? Technical name grumbling still fills the air, but any stroll through the warehouse-y neighborhood will reveal a juxtaposition of both worlds.

After an exciting August – both in terms of the weather and the real estate market – expectations ran high for September. Not only did August have remarkable increases in rental prices all over Manhattan, but it also had a hurricane and an earthquake. That’s a tough act to follow, and it didn’t help that September had lots of rain and humidity. Nonetheless, September was a good month for Manhattan real estate overall, although not nearly as torrid as August. The gains made in September fell very much in line with luxury rental market trends of the past 3 years. Recent months showed divergent trends between studios and everything else, and that held true for September: while rental prices rose for 1- and 2-bedrooms, studio prices went down. Right now, Manhattan studios are undoubtedly the best bargains in the city. The luxury market still looks good though; overall rents increased by 0.8% in September even with this decline.

For many years, cries of “fresh fish!”, shouted by fish-mongers plying their wares, were far more prevalent than residents within Manhattan’s South Street Seaport. But since 2005, with the re-location of the Fulton Fish Market to Hunts Point, that paradigm has become obsolete, as many Manhattanites find themselves choosing to rent luxury apartments within this historic district. To be sure, there has been a changing atmosphere in the area dating back to the late 1970s, but since 2005 the rate of transformation has rapidly increased, perhaps representing the beginning of a new trend within Manhattan real estate.

When one thinks of the benefits of living in a luxury apartment building, one of those benefits is inevitably having a doorman. However, we at Luxury Rentals Manhattan have touted the benefits of not having a doorman in Manhattan -- and it seems the NYC real estate world has begun to agree with us. In the past two years, the desire for Manhattan luxury rental apartments in doorman buildings has significantly decreased. Perhaps the most obvious reason is the fact that New York City has been experiencing an historic economic downturn, therefore forcing many people to choose other, less expensive options. But this is not the only reason. The changing demographics within NYC, namely the increase of labor within the technological and creative industries who have different tastes have also played their part, causing a perfect storm of events leading to this dramatic decline in the desire for Manhattan luxury apartments in doorman buildings and possibly the beginning of a new trend within the NYC real estate market.