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.

First things first: The Octagon, on Roosevelt Island, is one of the elite new luxury rental listings on Roosevelt Island -- which is a distinction that increasingly means something. But The Octagon is also more than that -- something simultaneously both more futuristic and more historic than the average Manhattan luxury rental, and another sign of Roosevelt Island's rise as a neighborhood worth watching on the Manhattan real estate scene. The Octagon New Yorkers know today -- a 500-unit luxury rental building that's also one of the greenest green rental buildings in New York City -- was built in 2006, around a (yes) octagonal building with a much longer story behind it. The octagon that forms the hub of The Octagon dates back to 1841, and was built then by Alexander Jackson Davis as a blue octagonal entrance building to what was known then as the New York City Lunatic Asylum (Today, of course, we no longer say "lunatic asylum," and instead use the term "Port Authority Bus Terminal.") That the space has since become one of the most luxurious rental listings on Roosevelt Island -- after 55 years of service as a 19th-century mental hospital, if you're just joining us -- is notable enough. But with the installation of a new, energy-efficient fuel cell that makes The Octagon the first green apartment building in NYC and New York State to be so-powered, The Octagon also has a claim to being one of the greenest green rentals in Manhattan.

There is something to be said for the Manhattan doorman rental apartment, especially for the New Yorker coming home late at night, or returning from a Whole Foods or C-Town expedition loaded down with groceries. But while most Manhattan luxury rental listings are doorman rental listings -- it comes with the "luxury" part -- there's nothing that says that you need someone to open the door for you, even after an evening on the town or an afternoon at the supermarket. Chances are that if you've managed to find your way onto the internet, let alone to Luxury Rentals Manhattan, you're probably pretty accomplished in tasks such as opening and closing doors. Which is to say that, if you're browsing luxury rental listings in Soho or searching for a rental apartment on the Upper East Side, would it really matter to you that much whether the aformentioned luxury rental in Soho or rental apartment on the Upper East Side came with a doorman? Well, apparently a great many people do -- which means that doorman-free rental listings in those most desirable Manhattan neighborhoods are notably cheaper than their be-doorman'ed counterparts. Is this the sort of market efficiency a savvy apartment-hunter could exploit to his/her advantage?

Every month, the statistics on Manhattan luxury rentals tell the same story. Which means that just about every post we do on that topic reads pretty similar to the one before. At the risk of getting intolerably meta-bloggy, here's a quote from a recent Luxury Rentals Manhattan blog post on February's rental stats. "While increased demand should have led to a serious spike in Manhattan rents, it hasn't... yet. A pair of recent studies show that rents are up a robust 8 percent over 2010 figures, but rents are still essentially flat month-to-month, just as they were last month." You'll notice that "last month" links to another Luxury Rentals Manhattan blog post that says almost exactly the same thing. And so you see how this works, and has worked -- demand has stayed strong for Manhattan rentals, and is growing stronger as the traditional NYC real estate boomtime of spring approaches, but prices have barely budged month-over-month. That was the story in March, and it may yet be the story in April. It's the waiting for it to change part that has people nervous.