New York City Luxury Rental Blog

NYC dwellers have a dysfunctional relationship with the subway. We love it, of course -- even with fare hikes (and there are reportedly more on the way), it gets us where we need to go for a couple dollars, and keeps cars off the streets. And yet, it's hard not to hate it, sometimes (did we mention those upcoming fare hikes?) But the simple fact is that Manhattan real estate needs the subway. That's why we cheered the expansion of the 7 train into Clinton and West Chelsea, and why we're anxiously awaiting the opening of the Second Avenue subway. But with service cuts already in effect in the outer boroughs and many bus lines either reduced to banker's hours or disappeared entirely, New Yorkers are feeling more conflicted about the subway than ever. The Wall Street Journal, in a subscription-only article, recently charged subway service changes with depressing home sales in various neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn. Now, neither Queens nor Brooklyn nor apartment sales are our thing (although we do the NYC apartment sales thing, too), but the question still holds for people searching for rental apartments in Manhattan. The question being, how are subway changes changing the way we look for rental apartments in NYC?

Deja vu? Maybe a little bit. But while regular readers of the Luxury Rentals Manhattan already know about the end of the renter's market for Manhattan rental listings -- in part because we wrote about it a few weeks ago -- it's impressive to watch the evidence of the Manhattan real estate market's recovery continue to pile up. Impressive, and maybe just a little bit depressing -- as we wrote earlier this month, the NYC rental market is at its most renter-friendly when it's at its weakest. A stronger rental market means fewer concessions and other goodies, and makes sought-after no-fee apartment listings that much tougher to find. But while the most recent report from The Real Estate Group New York offers a vivid example of just how far the Manhattan rental market has come since the dog days of 2009, it's not quite as bad for renters as it sounds. There are still good deals to be found for those searching for Manhattan rental apartments. It just makes the search that much tougher. So, now that the soothing is over, what does the report actually say?

NYC dwellers of long standing -- or even longish standing -- remember a time when the Financial District was, finally, just that: a place where finance got done and power lunches were devoured, and just about that. Restaurants were closed by dinner time, bars locked up after happy hour, and grocery stores were something that existed 20 or more blocks north. That old Financial District doesn't really match with the Financial District of today, which has become one of Manhattan's fastest-growing and most promising residential neighborhoods -- and, not for nothing, also home to what are, per square foot and despite a recent rise in prices, the least expensive Manhattan apartments for rent this side of Harlem. The grand buildings of the Financial District -- many of them luxury rental buildings converted from previous lives as the office towers that used to define the neighborhood -- are home to a bunch of impressive and impressively appealing Financial District rental apartments but the neighborhood itself is, as the New York Observer's Guelda Voien points out, increasingly home to a vibrant and well-rounded neighborhood -- one where stroller-pushing families comfortably share space with party-throwing twentysomethings. Not bad, honestly, for a neighborhood that used to be a ghost town after the closing bell -- and nothing compared to what the Financial District promises to become over the next decade.

Manhattan real estate is not necessarily logical, and hardly a precise science. But for the most part, basic logic does apply, here. That is, it's easy to see why apartment listings in a certain Manhattan neighborhood are appealing to people looking for Manhattan rental apartments. A subway ride and a brief pub crawl is enough to explain why, say, people want to live in rental apartments in the East Village; a stroll through Central Park and a shopping jaunt at Fairway or Zabar's is enough to figure out what NYC dwellers see in Upper West Side rental listings. But while the appeal of Upper East Side rental listings is plain enough -- Central Park, museums, shopping, you already know all this -- it's about to get a little bit clearer. We're not saying that anyone would move to the Upper East Side because the UES just got its first branch of Danny Meyer's beloved burger joint Shake Shack. We wouldn't say that. But... have you ever been to Shake Shack? It's not impossible, and it's surely not unreasonable.

Yesterday, we wrote about the the latest development in the ongoing boom in new construction luxury rental apartment buildings in greater Hudson Yards -- a neighborhood that is sometimes (if unfortunately) called The Linc, and which encompasses the western edges of Chelsea and Clinton. If it seems like we've been covering the goings-on at Hudson Yards a lot here at the Luxury Rentals Manhattan blog, that would be because we have. It's not every day that you get to see a new neighborhood rise before your eyes in Manhattan, after all, and the presence of blockbuster new construction luxury rentals such as the LEED-certified Emerald Green, one of Manhattan's most impressive new green rental apartment listings, and the equally impresive 505 West 37th Street have already given Hudson Yards its share of blue chip new luxury rental listings. And now, with news that the planned expansion of the 7 train into Hudson Yards has finished drilling, this new neighborhood is close to a new subway link to the rest of New York City -- and possibly to a new life as one of Manhattan's most desirable residential neighborhoods.