has the rental marke in astoria suddenly weakened

It's called another leg down......

Compared to when, rb? Like the prior week, or the prior month, or the prior year?

rb... all the $2K/month Astoria renters realized that they could get same in Manhattan. When all of Astoria and thereabouts start renting at $1k/month, you'll get some blowbacks from manhattanites back to Astoria... when the musical chairs stops is when we reach a new equilibrium vs. rents, buy, rent/burbs, buy/burbs.... and ppl's income... enjoy the ride.... the N/R (old school)....

I live in Astoria and I'm just waiting out my lease to make the jump into Manhattan. w67thstreet is absolutely correct.

inonada:

compared to the week and the nonth before .. and thanks for respondiing

I'd guess is just random slowness. Or perhaps people were enjoying the good weather and spending less time on apt search.

Systems appear relatively stable right up to the point of collapse. (old social movements and chaotic systems theory)

Skinny:

Right now the rental market doesnt appear that stable to me. In fact, I am concerned that
rents could collapse because of prolonged and deep income loss and income compression
amoung prople who can no longer afford to rent.

Still bery quiet. Has somebody on SE kidnapped all of my
prospective tenants?

jumping in as a broker rb,

are you using the same ad?
Right now there are a lot of people looking and even more people posting, so it is important to post often and to constantly refresh the look of your ads as sometimes people will not click on ads that look like ones that they've seen in the past. Sort of the " if it looks old it ain't good." method of posting.

Also, try posting on naked apartments, they offer 10 free contacts to start and the pool of listings is a lot smaller in astoria so your ad will stand out more.
If that doesn't work, give it to a broker that works in Astoria and let them bring you tenants. The main draw of a broker is that they can advertise a cheaper apartment and get the client that can spend a little more on yours ;) hahaha.. it's our job always to make clients spend more or less money on rent than what they actually call on. I am not too familiar with the brokers there but I believe there is a guy Duncan or something on Astoria that rents one of my management company's listings there and he rents them pretty fast.

rb345,

What is the usual "demography" of your clients?

From what I know of Astoria, there are a reasonable number of college/grad students living there (usually 3 or 4 to an apartment.) The semester is winding down so a lot of the student population is probably packing up for the summer and trying to find subletters for the summer months.

Depending upon how much you rent your apartments for this may not be your usual clientele.

Aside from that, some of the folks I know who rent in Astoria are recent grads in their first full-time job. The last-hired, first fired category which is economically precarious. I'm pretty sure a few of these are giving up and moving back home to their parents house.

As for any new hires of fresh graduates, it's probably a little early in the season.

I don't know if any of these are the clientele you serve, but you haven't given us much to go on.

YMMV