lots of no fee apts. between $1000 -$1500 in the UES on craigslist...

Told ya... it'll be a tsunami of cheap rentals... furthering the bid/ask spread on the purchase side... there ARE TRULY amazing rental deals... I'd say 1999ish.

i did a search earlier in the flatiron area and didn't do so well. but when i did one for chelsea, amazing. w67th, when did rents explode? was it 2000? because what i'm seeing is definitely lower than that, so maybe 1999.

yep, we are headed to 1999 with no signs of stopping in Chinatown... its headed straight to Brooklyn.

"on craigslist"

Lot's of 3 card monte cardboard stands on the streets......

Yup, that's right. A lot of those postings are fake. I have an apartment that I rent out and was wondering if I should change the rent to entice the current tenants to re-up when the lease is due, and called and emailed some comparable places I saw listed on Craigslist. Typical broker bait-and-switch - yes, even a lot of the ones that say "no brokers" or "by owner."

Here is a typical conversation by phone or by email:

Me: Hi, I'm interested in the apartment and would like to set up a time to see it in person.
Craigslist poster: Oh, so sorry, that just rented, but I have another one like it.

Two days later, I see the exact same ad, freshly reposted!

I never succeeded in finding an apartment that actually was the same as mine in size, amenities, and price, so I don't think I will lower the rent after all. If a legit landlord has a tenant who sees all of those bogus uber-low postings, I suggest landlord can either encourage the tenant to look around before deciding to resign.

There has been a definite and legitimate decline in rents, and last year I also lowered rents from where they were a few years ago, but most of the super cheap stuff out there now is just fake.

Even more frustrating for us owners, who are trying to rent our vacancies with honest ads, pictures and descriptions

I owned up till 2000 - wish I had never sold and continuted to live in my studio but that's besides the point. Downtown in the village we couldn't find a decent 1br for $2700. We went to 777 Sixth for 2750 = new building and got a nice apt vs an ugly old apt we could get in the village. Now at that time and still now it really isn't "nice" chelsea. We were on a lower floor -upper floors over $3000. Rents had a nice drop after 9/11 and we moved in 2002 to take advantage of that. WE went to Murray Hill for $2450 and in 2007 the rent was jacked up over $3k.

A friend of mine recently was recently looking for a cheap studio/1 bedroom on the UES. She ended up in a cute 1 bedroom on 92nd street. It is on the same block as another friend of mine rented in 2006 for about $2000. Her rent is $1550. The apartments are absolutely comparable (2006 rental was slightly larger, but 2009 one has a better layout.) That said, it was NOT easy. She had to see tons of apartments because so many listed were fakes or just awful. She searched for almost 2 months (and was lucky she had that flexibility). I think once your budget hits $1700 it gets easier, but at the low end, you still have to be willing to invest a lot of time to find the right place at your price point.

MAV, do you post on SE? They allow owners to post rentals without a broker. Personally, I gave up on craigslist years ago when SE came out personally.

Yes, I have begun posting on SE. I have not gotten too big of a response for anything and they take longer to come in, but the few tenants I have gotten from here have been much better applicants than CL.

I think a lot of people do not even know to come to SE for rentals, as the site is so heavily geared towards sales. Then, when people do find the rentals page "featured buildings" and "Featured listings " are at the top and to find no fee rentals people have to know to scroll down the page. Not only would they get more traffic here if there was more of an emphasis on no fee rentals, but a lot more owners would post the apartments if there was more visibility....

FWIW, everyone I know looks on SE and not CL for rentals. Do you list an address? What is your typical price range?

"Everyone" that any one person knows is never an accurate cross section. Yes, I list the apartments by their address.

In the last few months, I have rented studios from 1200 (UES) to $1900 (West Village), 1 bedrooms from $1600 to $2700, 2 bedrooms from $1800-2800, all in buildings our company owns and manages...

Your citing Craigslist as a source? HA HA. Craigslist is so funny. It should be called Scamlist because that is what it really is. Unless your selling a used microwave or looking for a hooker, Craigslist is virtually useless.

oh, and speaking fo Craigslist, my father has been using the site frequently over the past few weeks to find a new job. He just got this e-mail earlier today:

Dear Candidate,

We got your resume and your application for our ad. We are sincerely sorry to inform you that the position has been occupied. Our manager went through your resume and you have been picked for an alternative Job which is the Payment Personnel. The position has been occupied and now what we need is a representative and Account Receivable / Payment Personal manager for the company on financialissues.

About The Company :
(At HOLOPHANE ) is an established U.K Company that deals in innovative Art Works Technology, provison of art materials worldwide. We serve the entire United States and a growing export market. Your primary task for now, as a representative of the company is to coordinate payments from customers and help us with the process. You are not involved in any sales. Once orders are received and sorted we deliver the product to a customer. After this been done the customer has to pay for the products but in most cases we make our clients prepay for orders or items they ordered for.About 90 percent of our customers prefer to pay through Credit Card Transfers,Cashiers Check , Certified Checks or Money Orders drawn from the United State based on the amount involved why Only few decides on Bank Transfers. We have decided to open this new contract to hire job position for solving this problem. Your First Primary task (Collection of Payments)

YOUR TASKS & OBJECTIVES

I must let you know that applicant must be able to multitask; tasks & duties will include interaction with clients through email & phone, receiving payments from customers (payment methods include; cash, money order, western union, money gram, check e.t.c), and preparing reports for the field manager.

Very important, applicant must have access to his/her email daily either through phone or computer as we won't tollerate any reluctance to work because most notifications are done through email.

Your 1st primary task will be to receive payment on behalf of the company. This will show your ability to handle cash, your speed to multitask, and your commitment based on your response & report to your field manager

Your commission for that will be 10% percent of the payment received. Payment might come from officers under you, from clients for the services we render or for the purchase of our products.

SALARY

This job is based on salary & commissions.

Your salary is $1500 which is paid every 2weeks.

Commission: 10% of every payment you receive on behalf of the company.

On each occasion, you will be instructed by your senior officer on how to manage the funds or forward the payments once you have received it
HOW MUCH WILL YOU EARN?
10% from each operation! For instance: you receive 7000 USD via checks or money orders on our behalf. You will cash the money and keep $700 (10% from $7000) for yourself! At the beginning your commission will equal 10%, though later it will increase up to 12%!

ADVANTAGES
You do not have to go out as you will work as an independent contractor right from your home office. Your job is absolutely legal. You can earn up to $3000-4000 monthly depending on time you will spend for this job. You do not need any capital to start. You can do the Work easily without leaving or affecting your present Job. The employees who make efforts and work hard have a strong possibility to become managers. Anyway our employees never leave us due to our excellent work condition.

MAIN REQUIREMENTS
Under the age of 80,legally capable and responsible,ready to work 3-4 hours per week. with PC knowledge,e-mail and internet experience (minimal) And please know that Everything is absolutely legal, that's why You have to fill a contract! If you are interested in our offer, please respond with the following details for us to reach you.

NOTICE :
We will never ask you for anything more then that, no bank account number, routing number, credit card, passwords, SSN # etc. If anyone asks for those on our behalf, please do not give out this info. This is to ensure your security and non-involvement in cases of identity theft. If anyone ask you for any of those info in our notice please kindly report to your nearest local or federal authorities.

-------

Now other than the fact that the "job" clearly UNLAWFULLY discriminates against people over the age of 80, the job is a scam. You get a fake chanck, cash it, and then send 90% of it to the company. When the bank finds out the check si fake, they hold your esponsible!

This year, I've had surprisingly good luck seeing all the UWS side apartments I was interested in on Craigslist. None of them were for me (in my price range, they tend to run the gamut from sketchy to dingy), but I was surprised that none of them were bait-and-switch. Of course, I don't even try to contact the ones that have stupid animated GIFs and vague info.

alpie, It amazes me how you find such innovative ways to discredit urself.

I'll tell you one drawback of Craigslist: my job started blocking access to all of Craigslist about 6 months ago. (Doubtless because it has adult services, etc. on it.) So even if I wanted to look at CL for rentals, I can't do it during the day.

Not sure how many other companies are doing this, but it's definitely reduced my traffic to the CL site.

^good point, thanks for sharing...

I actually was able to find my current place on craigslist, but it took a ton of time weeding through garbage postings. What I started doing was two months in advance going to places that were no fee and had open houses, I quickly found a place I liked and was able to get the paperwork completed directly through the building manager.

I am not a broker but I recently helped a friend of mine rent out his very small but nice coop studio on Lex. in the 20's. I rented it for a little less than $1100, which is probably a tad under market. I used Craigs list and it was great. I got many responses from (seemingly) qualified renters. No doubt, there's a lot of @#$$ on Craigs List but I still think it's great.

MAV, I think SE is preferred by people looking at for-fee apartments from one-off landlords. Not too many no-fee places directly being marketed by landlords, though certainly growing. At your price points, people have a very strong aversion against for-fee places. Combine that with the equal amount of noise as CL you get from no-fee broker listings, and I don't think no-fee-only people use SE much.

Has CL added a pay-per-posting section? Seems to me that it'd solve the problem...

what se stands for? please provide full name.

lots of people who lived in UES studios have lost work.

I'll be nice and pretend you're serious: streeteasy, the site you are looking as your eyes are passing these words.

it's been a cold rainy weekend ino - only excuse possible.

I will add that I found my current two bedroom rental on craigslist and it has been fantastic. I rent directly from the owner, who lived here until he rented to me, and I'm coming up on four years. I know CL's gotten worse since I was looking but I still think there are legit apartments on there, just a lot more junk to wade through.

I used Craig's to view 22 apartments in "Hudson Heights" in the past four days.

Like any other user driven website that is around for more than a few years, it has gotten poisoned by hordes of morons...

You just have to know how to filter and find what you are looking for