Apartment rentals New York with The Hunt

There are building amenities—and then there are luxury building amenities.

Falling into the latter category are the services being provided at 45-45 Center Boulevard in Long Island City, whose list of amenities contains a lot more than the usual doorman and concierge service. Perhaps the most interesting of these features is the 5000 square-foot outdoor space, which contains, among other things, a real sand beach volleyball court. That’s right—if you live at 45-45 Center Boulevard, you will no longer need to go to the beach for some fun games in the sun.

Here’s something that should put a smile on the faces of apartment hunters in New York City. Rental reports from Douglas Elliman and Citi Habitats for the month of December say that average rents for apartments in Manhattan have once again decreased, with the average rent coming to just $3,284 a month, an appreciable dip from the whopping average rent of $3,461 that was seen in August. With tight credit conditions forcing many New Yorkers to abandon plans for buying a home, rentals continue to be very much in demand, resulting in a very tight market.

Manhattan real estate heads already know that Joyce Cohen's "The Hunt" column in the New York Times is one of the more enjoyable Manhattan real estate reads out there. But as entertaining as it is to read Cohen's interviews with people seeking (and finding) rental apartments in Manhattan, there's always the matter of authorial distance. That is -- and we're not going to get too lit-crit on you, both because it's been a long time since college and because this is the blog on a website about luxury rental apartments in Manhattan -- the question of where and how Cohen herself lives. Does it color her perspective? Bias her discussion of neighborhoods? Are her ceilings higher than yours?