The autumn winds are descending on New York City, which can only mean one thing--there’s a storm coming. Fall is a banner season for the Manhattan rental market, and projections for the final three months of 2012 look to heighten this precedent. Rental prices hit a record high in July, totalling about $3,459 per month. That’s an astounding sum to pay for a single apartment. Before you head out to the nearest agency, be prepared to encounter stricter lease requirements. Now that the market is on fire, landlords are allowed to demand the very best of their tenants.

Despite the seemingly kid-friendly name of Alphabet City, this neighborhood situated within the Lower East Side was, for a long time, known as one of the gritty and grimy neighborhoods of New York City. However, the wild days of Alphabet City have drawn to a close and the neighborhood today has become an increasingly desirable place for young people and families, who are taking advantage of Alphabet City’s transformation into one of Manhattan’s hip, trendy and, most importantly, affordable neighborhoods to live in.

Classy, chic and comfortable—these are the words that are often used when describing the Upper East Side neighborhood of New York City. And now, here’s another adjective to throw into the mix: cool. At first, this may be a little hard to comprehend; after all, this Manhattan neighborhood has long had a reputation of being rather pricey, thereby keeping hip (but cheap) New Yorkers at bay. With its beautiful pre-war buildings that are located blocks away from Central Park, apartments on the Upper East Side have always been in high demand and, therefore, have been mostly out of reach for the “cool crowd.” But, of late, the homes here have suddenly become affordable, and the reason for that is, interestingly enough, coming from underground—the Second Avenue Subway construction.

In a city with apartment buildings known for their dizzying heights and grandeur, walk-up apartment buildings in New York City have long had a lower, less glamorous profile. Walk-ups are buildings that have just five or six stories of apartments in them, and, as their name suggests, they do not have an elevator. Walk-up buildings reflect a style of construction of the early 20th century, and the flights of stairs to climb every day have been a deterrent for New Yorkers looking for an apartment to rent in the city. But that was in the past. With the trend of increasing rents sweeping through rental buildings in Manhattan, the apartments in these small walk-ups represent a gold mine for the landlords of such buildings. 

With many of Manhattan’s popular neighborhoods getting denser by the day, it is only natural that people looking for homes in the city are looking for newer, but traditionally overlooked, neighborhoods to move into. One such neighborhood, which has found many takers among the renters of New York City, is the quiet yet evolving locality of Hamilton Heights in West Harlem. With Manhattanville on one end and Washington Heights on the other, Hamilton Heights is in the midst of a revival of sorts, with people coming in to the neighborhood to make use of its low rents and great living atmosphere. The average rent of a one-bedroom apartment here comes to $1,600, whereas buying a townhouse would cost you about $1 million, a fraction of the cost of a similar home in Brooklyn.