Rents Falling in Manhattan a Lot, Brooklyn Not So Much
Residential rents in Manhattan fell pretty much across the board last year, and incentives like a month’s free rent are becoming increasingly common. The head of Halstead’s rental division estimates that prices are down between 10 and 15 percent from the 2007 peak though the article’s author digs up “anecdotal evidence” that the number is…
Residential rents in Manhattan fell pretty much across the board last year, and incentives like a month’s free rent are becoming increasingly common. The head of Halstead’s rental division estimates that prices are down between 10 and 15 percent from the 2007 peak though the article’s author digs up “anecdotal evidence” that the number is more like 20 percent. One by-product of the weaker market is that many more landlords are now willing to pay a broker’s fee to land a tenant. In the past, slowing sales has often meant a tighter rental market, but that’s not always the case: People assume when sale slows down, rental will pick up, but that depends on what the source of this is, said Gregory J. Heym, the chief economist at Terra Holdings, which owns Halstead and Brown Harris Stevens. When you’re losing jobs, the rental market is also going to suffer. Echoing what we’ve been hearing recently, the rental market in Brooklyn has not softened as much. We’re not renting as fast as we would have expected, said Patrick McGrath, whose firm recently bought and started renting out The Standish in Brooklyn Heights. We’ve had to provide concessions — a free month rent, we pay the broker fee. But rents are around where we expected them to be. We’re in the ballpark.
A Month Free? Rents Are Falling Fast [NY Times]
Photo by turkeychik
At the risk of causing a 40-post flame war, are all “1-2 family buildings” considered “brownstones”? It seems they are slightly overlapping categories… you both might be right.
“I was just attempting to be accurate when it was said that brownstones make up a large part of the rental market in Brooklyn because I thought I read the 5% figure somewhere.”
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The What (11217 Sucks balls)
Someday this war is gonna end…
Dave,
You are probably right. Particularly since there is more and more FRBO action in the 2-fam sector of the rental market, it would be hard for realtors to aggregate data on this slice of the market.
I wasn’t even trying to make a connection to the rental market and the number of brownstones. I was just attempting to be accurate when it was said that brownstones make up a large part of the rental market in Brooklyn because I thought I read the 5% figure somewhere.
That’s all.
I would be interested to know just out of curiousity, but as for what it means with reference to this article, I don’t have a clue.
slopefarm…that was my original point. I think that because so many units are in 1-2 family buildings and most likely not going through brokers, that the data is hard to come by. Or what data there is might not be truly representative.
This is all a pretty useless debate without meaningful data. Anyone have year-over-year data on rentals in brownstone Brooklyn neighborhoods?
“New Lots”
Thanks for shouting out my old neighborhood, 11217.
I think the answer to the 5% or 20% depends upon the definition. If we are talking on a housing-unit basis, then I agree that it is closer to 5% than 20%. There are about 850,000 units of housing in Brooklyn. I really doubt that 170,000 of these units are apartments in Brownstones.
As 11217 pointed out, there are vast tracts of the borough that were developed after 1910, by which time brownstone construction had stopped. Moreover, a good deal of this post WWI construction is in the form of 6 story apartment buildings. Take a ride down Ocean Parkway,Ocean Ave or Nostrand Ave, and they are lined with these types of buildings.
No panic here, Whuh. Still a buyer of property, Whuh. Hope to have you as a tenant someday.
You should run a poost in the Forum and ask people to tell you why property is a good long-term investment.