Manhattan Rent Hikes Slow

Notice price PSF is actually DOWN 4.5% YOY. That's the most important number.

-4.3% with concessions.

>Manhattan apartment-rent increases slowed for a third month in December as more tenants pushed back against landlord price hikes by moving out.

So in the slow months of October, November, and December, you are still able to draw a conclusion?

> It was the third consecutive month in which year-over-year rent growth hovered around 1 percent, compared with an average of 7.4 percent for the year through September

ah, so in the period including the busy months, it was up 7.4%.

>“We’re not at this frenzied upward trajectory anymore,” he said. “We have some more gains in front of us, but I don’t think we’re going to see the same rapid ascent we saw over the last year and a half.”

So the rate of increase is decreasing, but they aren't seeing decreases.

>New rental agreements signed in December, usually a slow period for leasing, jumped 21 percent from a year earlier to 2,901.

>The median monthly rent rose to $3,150, up 0.8 percent from a year earlier,

So people moved out at a faster pace than normal Decembers, but had to move in elsewhere, and the result is that rents were still up during that month.

> You’re paying more rent than you were before, but you’re probably paying less than your landlord presented to you.”

So rents are still going up, and tenants aren't avoiding an increase, just getting a lower increase by going through all the steps required when moving.

>Improving employment will continue to spur demand for leasing, putting monthly rents on course to surpass the peak of $3,265 in the second quarter, according to Miller.

>New York City added 66,200 jobs in the 12 months through November, according to the state Labor Department. Newly hired potential tenants will compete for housing with would-be buyers who can’t find something to purchase in a market where listings plunged to their lowest in 12 years.

>The boroughwide average rent in 2012 was $3,412, up 5 percent from the previous year,

>. Miller Samuel placed the vacancy rate at 1.77 percent last month, compared with 2.04 percent in December 2011.

>Leases for luxury apartments, or the top 10 percent of all rentals by price, increased 20 percent in December from a year earlier to 290 new agreements, Miller Samuel and Douglas Elliman said. The median monthly rent for those deals climbed 16 percent to $7,995.

>In Brooklyn, New York’s most populous borough, rents climbed 1.4 percent in December

Jason the Retard is back from San Francisco!

One reason for decline in Manhattan rents might be that more people are choosing to
live in Brooklyn, some of whose neighborhoods are now more expensive to rent in than
formerly prime Manhattan neighborhoods like the UES.

>One reason for decline in Manhattan rents m

The article didn't cite any decline in Manhattan rents. Only that they aren't growing as fast.

lol jason just got pwned by hberg

a slower rent hike is still a rent... hike

surprisingly in winter nonetheless.

Miller Samuel's rental ppsf numbers for Q4 of each of the following years.

2006: $50.24
2007: $51.00
2008: $49.30
2009: $47.02
2010: $49.13
2011: $52.16
2012: $49.88

Inflation at 2-3% would run at $1.00-$1.50 a year, $6.00-$9.00 in aggregate over the 6 years.

Despite the never-ending stream of articles proclaiming rent hikes year after year, and the ensuing frothing of the mouths from a certain set of people year after year, the data says flat.

Heck, when I decided not to buy years ago I was figuring inflationary rent increases. The flat rents have been pure gravy.

Maintenance increases in the mean-time have been flat as well.

"surprisingly in winter nonetheless."

You are a idiot. Rents PSF went DOWN year over year. December compared to December. So seasonality is not an issue.

"a slower rent hike is still a rent... hike"

No, if rents per square foot are DOWN 4.3% YOY net of concessions that is a DECLINE. Factoring inflation, its more like a 6% real decline. If overall rents per apartment are up by less than inflation, then even measured that way its a real money decline. But PSF is the most "real" measure.

As huntersburg, 90% of the posters here have him on ignore. Basically, he and columbiacounty are the only two people who read both of their posts. Now you are the third, but you will ignore them soon ehough.

"One reason for decline in Manhattan rents might be that more people are choosing to
live in Brooklyn, some of whose neighborhoods are now more expensive to rent in than
formerly prime Manhattan neighborhoods like the UES."

This is a quite idiotic statement. The "UES" is a HUGE area. The only PRIME parts are Carnegie and Lenox Hills. You cannot find a like-for-like apartment cheaper per square foot from Lexington to fifth from 59th to 86th or from 86th to 96th from Lex to fifth than you can in Brooklyn. Not even CLOSE. You might find a walk up in those areas cheaper than a new doorman in BK, but that is NOT like for like. Show me a 4,000 SF townhouse with modern finishes or a doorman new bldg in both per SF. NOT EVEN CLOSE in price.

Showing us something in yorkville is not "prime" Manhattan, and never was.

I cannot think of any "formerly prime" areas in Manhattan that are now cheaper relative to Brooklyn.

Jason the retard cited an article. He picked the article. But the article doesn't support his conclusion.

Net of concessions ... a little bit of hokus pokus, some sleight of hand, the retard is quite excited.

The conclusion of the article, the link that Jason posted, is that people are paying more. And even people who moved are paying more, just less more.

>"One reason for decline in Manhattan rents might be that more people are choosing to
live in Brooklyn, some of whose neighborhoods are now more expensive to rent in than
formerly prime Manhattan neighborhoods like the UES."
>This is a quite idiotic statement.

So the article Jason posted and said supported his conclusion, he's now calling the article idiotic once it's been pointed out that it reached an opposite conclusion he expected.

What a retard.

>Heck, when I decided not to buy years ago I was figuring inflationary rent increases. The flat rents have been pure gravy.

What are you talking about? You said you locked in a 2 year lease with a third year option? Why is the market gravy if you already negotiated a good deal?

Jason's point obviously makes sense - rents went up (just not so fast) but price per square foot went down. That must have been accomplished by the people moving who moved into a larger place, for more money, but less per square foot - is that what he is saying, that the people who wanted to save money by pushing back against their landlord's increases said screw it, I'm moving but I'm going to upgrade to more space as long as it is cheaper psf? That's a real weak market.

I have no skin in support of a more expensive rental market. I've always said that buying is too expensive, and renting is too expensive. But Jason the Retard, I think he should go back to San Francisco and learn how to read. And also learn how to use the proper ZIP code.

>> Jason the retard cited an article. He picked the article. But the article doesn't support his conclusion.

Jason originally posted "rent hikes slow". The he went and looked at the actual data, which shows a YoY drop in ppsf. So he stated that. That must have bothered you, so you went on a 12-unanswered-post rampage.

The interesting story here is that we've had 6 years of flat ppsf, yet that's not what the Real Estate Industrial Complex and puppet media report. To hear it from them, we had 1 year with a moderate drop (2009), 2 years with moderate hikes (2008 & now 2012), and 3 years with sizable hikes (2007, 2010, 2011). But reality on ppsf from the same data is flat, not even inflation.

>That must have bothered you, so you went on a 12-unanswered-post rampage.

Rampage! Such destruction.

But we agree, he picked an article, used that article in the headline of this thread, and it didn't support his conclusion.

HB, not sure the story changes much due to apt mix. Median apt rent in Q4 2006 was $3265. The current report says $3150.

And his conclusion isn't supported by logic.

People are paying more. He concludes that price per square foot decreases. But apartments don't change size. So it has to be people moving to bigger apartments at lower ppsf (but not lower prices). There simply aren't enough moves (and he gave the move stats) to allow for this dramatic decline in ppsf in the market.

>HB, not sure the story changes much due to apt mix. Median apt rent in Q4 2006 was $3265. The current report says $3150.

Right, so how do you get to higher prices, but lower ppsf?

>The interesting story here is that we've had 6 years of flat ppsf, yet that's not what the Real Estate Industrial Complex and puppet media report. To hear it from them, we had 1 year with a moderate drop (2009), 2 years with moderate hikes (2008 & now 2012), and 3 years with sizable hikes (2007, 2010, 2011). But reality on ppsf from the same data is flat, not even inflation.

Rents are already expensive, that's why.

>> Right, so how do you get to higher prices, but lower ppsf?

Huh? Data says ppsf down 1% 2006-present, median down 3.5% 2006-present.

The article says prices are higher (they just grew less fast) and then the link through says ppsf is lower. What is the explanation?

>> Rents are already expensive, that's why.

So let's say a Maserati sold for $200K last decade, still sells for $200K. Automotive articles come out year-after-year saying prices of Maseratis went up yet again because they are so hot and in demand, replete with quotes from auto dealers.

Inonada points out inconsistency. HB retorts "Maseratis are expensive, that's why."

Good to know. As long as item is expensive, HB thinks it makes complete sense to constantly say they are getting more expensive even when they are not.

>HB thinks it makes complete sense to constantly say they are getting more expensive even when they are not.

THE ARTICLE says they are getting more expensive.

>> The article says prices are higher (they just grew less fast) and then the link through says ppsf is lower. What is the explanation?

Avg rent for Q4 2006 was $3874 vs $3943 for Q4 2012, up 1.8%. Let's summarize Q4 2006 through Q4 2012:

Avg ppsf: -1%
Median rent: -3.5%
Avg rent: +1.8%

The explanation is that with 3 statistics to choose from and 3 prior values (last month, last quarter, last year) and multiple other slices (apt size, location, luxury, etc.), you can find a few stats to spin a story any way you like.

But reality is that over the past 6 years, rents have under-performed inflation by 15+% any way you slice it.

I'm talking about the inconsistency in the article and its logic (and Jason's). Instead of clarifying, you say I went on a rampage that was unanswered, and then you go talk about totally new inflation adjusted measures.
Sounds like neither of us can support this conclusion Jason is supporting

>> Maintenance increases in the mean-time have been flat as well.

So you are saying that you've experienced zero inflation over the past 6 years in a significant expense category?

I guess I was right.
Except on the Maserati, that hasn't held up to inflation.

I really don't understand how the month of December or the 4th qtr can be an reliable indicator on the trend in rents. This cherry picking factoid to prove rents are either decreasing or not rising as much as in the past is ridiculous.
In my opinion building maintenance cost will continue to rise and if vacancy rates remain the sames I really can't see rents wil not continue to increase. I would like to know if anyone believes that the majority of buildings in Manhattan have not had a maintenance cost increase over the previous year.
Love to do a survey to see if those that are renting in Manhattan have experience a rent increase in their lease renewal over the past few years.

what I find interesting is that those who read these articles about how rents in Manhattan are decreasing or remain flat get very joyful until it's time to renew their lease. Then they say hey that wasn't suppose to happen because I read an article that said rents are decreasing. Why is my lease renewal showing an increase when this article that I was so delighed about told me my rent was suppose to decrease.

Inonada:

1. I havent read Miller-Samuel report
2. however, all reports like that suffer from over-generalization
3. in my personal experience rents have spiked sharply in recent years
4. in July I rented a Brooklyn apt - in one day thru a broker - for 20% more
than what I got with difficulty as a No-Fee rental the year before

5. at the same time I rented an EV 400-ft 3rd floor w/u in an 1888 building
for between 15-20%+ less I could have gotten this year if my tenant had not
exercised his option to renew

6. my rents in Astoria - which is a spill-over area from the UES - are also up
20-30% since late 2010

7. so what explains the seeming discrepancy between my actual experience and M-S
8. one possibility is an enlargement of the market

9. the bulk of growth in supply in recent years has occurred in less desirable areas
where rents are a lot lower: financial district; far west side: 10th Avenue in 30's,
42nd and 12th; far East Village; Harlem; East Harlem

10. averaging those rents with better located Manhattan properties will by definition
cause price/square foot to decline even when rents are flat or slightly rising

11. the only way to truly comp a market is at its most basic level: by apartment size, eg,
studio, neighborhood - defined narrowly; and building type: w/u, elevator, doorman

12. and even doing that is not statistically 100% reliable because of differences within
category apartments, eg, new ultra-lux doorman vs. 1950's doorman building; individual
apt sizes - which are often not correctly reported or recorded, eg, 275 ft as vs. 500
ft. studios; and small sample margin-of-error: 15 comps in a particular neoghborhood
can sometimes be off by a lot, especially if clustered in a small # of buildings

13. another source of statistical bias comes from comping no-fee and broker rentals: owners
like me who rent no-fee add part of the unpaid commission into our rents

14. you have the resources as a broker at a major firm to do your own evaluation
15. if you want to, look for apartments which have rented more than once since 2006, or iden-
tical apts in the same building which have rented more than once since 2006

16. properly formatting and analyzing that data will give you a more reliance read on
change in rent over time

rb345: dodo's entire purpose in life is to prove to other readers on streeteasy that he made the right move when deciding to rent rather than buy.

I just received an emal from a brokerage firm called MNS stating that Brooklyn
rents are up oer 10% from 2011 and 1.8& from November.

That claim - if correct - means that Manhattan rental market is softening because
of movement to Brooklyn.

That softening is probably most pronounced in the Financial District, which like
downtown Brooklyn is a short trip to Brooklyn's downtown business district.

Hurricane Sandy has also probably caused a disproportionate drop in FIDI rents because
of the realization that large parts of the neighborhood are in a serious flood zone.

What about the woman in the article, Balingit, her $2,350 studio that she raced to get, was that up or down?

rb345 - you could have saved yourself the 14 point post had you READ the short MS report. Its like 3 pages and takes 5 minutes. YES, BK rents are up by double-digits YOY. This thread, you will note, is about MANHATTAN. Hence your personal anecdotes negate nothing inonada or have said. Read the fricking M-S report on Prudential's website before commenting further, thanks.

fricking frack.

If a tenant renews an existing lease with their landlord, how and where is that data recorded again?

I'm being snide, but certainly in a world where we SE peeps can't agree on how to read sales and purchase data (most of which flows back to public city records) how do we agree on how to read rental data -- which is reported by brokers at the time of an initial lease signing, but is reported by ...who ... after that?

Not that I'm not arguing that the aggregate rental data necessarily tracked up or down. It just seems that unless we're looking at recurrent records for large property holders who repeatedly lease the same properties (an Archstone or a Glenwood, say) I don't see how a reported ppsf number or an average number is based on a good enough sample to mean anything.

We are seeing data reports that indicate that the price of fruit is changing, but I don't know that we can extrapolate from those reports what's happening to the price of apples.

ali r.
DG Neary Realty

M-S is about as methodological as you can get in this regards. He does, in fact, include lease re-signing in his data. HIS website (as opposed to Prudential) explains exactly how he does it. If its good enough to mentioned in the New York Federal Reserve reports, its good enough for these purposes.

Article, from headline on down contradicts.

See the M-S INFLATION ADJUSTED prices for median, average, and PSF:

http://www.millersamuel.com/files/2010/01/3q12MRMOadjrentindicators.jpg

In constant dollars, PSF is unchanged from 2001, median and average overall apt prices from the 90s.

So as long as your salary at LEAST kept up with inflation (NYS CPI), you'd be ok renting for the past decade.

Meanwhile, the sales/rent ratio has been above the 20 year average since 2003. So again, you have been better off renting for the past decade, in real terms:

http://www.millersamuel.com/files/2009/08/3q12MRMOmedianrentvsale.jpg

The second chart says that the ratio is inflation adjusted. What does it mean to inflation adjust a ratio?

Jason:

1. I just reviewed the Elliman market report
2. you are incorrect in concluding that it accurately describes the NYC rental market

3. first, its sample consists entirely of apts that DEGI itself rented
4. it thus does not reflect or report upon the overall market
5. and it is subject to several biasing factors, including the fact that DEGI rentals seem
to disproportionately include new, less well-located developments

6. second, sample size in some sub-categories is relatively low
7. and doesnt indicate year-to-year change in mix of doorman, elevator, w/u apts
8. or whether 2011 included a larger % of new ultra-luxury apts rather than older buildings

9. third, its report that Manhattan rents are up 10.0% year:year while $/sq.ft are down 4.9%
does not make any sense and cannot be explained statistically unless DEGI rented a large #
of really big lofts at low $/sq.ft: on that point the report's statement that loft rents
were up 37.2% from 2011 might be an indicator of just such a biasing event

10. fourth, your conclusion overlooks what might be the report's single most imnportant finding
11. that vacancy rates in Manhattan fell about 1/6 in all arears except uptown, where they rose 1.50%
12. lower vacancy rates mean a tightening supply which usually is a forward indicator that rents will rise

13. Conclusion: rent up 10% and vacancies down 16.6667% suggests a rising market and higher $/sq.ft

Wow, a 13 point smackdown, one more than huntersburg's (that's me!) "12-unanswered-post rampage" (which was actually answered, first by ss400k who said, "lol jason just got pwned by hberg").

By the way, why wasn't inododo able to answer my points directly, and had to change the subject to misleading "inflation adjusted" statistics which has nothing to do with the article, or changing the subject to Maseratis which seems to be some sort of projection about him trying to be w67 with a porsche.

14 points of bullshit. No, it does NOT consist only of units DEGI rented. Right off the bat you start with a bullshit point. That negates points 4-6. Here is what M-S,m dumb shit:

"Data sources Rental data is not public record and was therefore collected from area brokers who are members of REBNY as well as those collected by Prudential Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel during their normal course of business. The data collected is market-wide and does not represent the rental activity of a specific company."

On point 10, you are REALLY stupid if you don't know why the average can be up by 10% but the median only up by 0.8% and not see how that might make PPSF lower. Clearly, their were very high-end units drving up the average at the top. You can have even wider skews than what we see here.

For example, the Census bureau says Manhattan (NY county) has a median HH income of $68,000 but an AVERAGE HH income of $120k. How can the average be so far from the mean? Hmmmm...try taking a basic math class. Similarly, for the US as a whole AVERAGE wages have gone up more or less for several decades, but MEDIAN wages have been flat. How can that be? Hmmmm take a ficing math class numb nuts.

His data includes the price and square footage for the ENTIRE MARKET of REBNY listings, and he divides total rental price for all units by total square footage. Its not rocket science.

Points 11&12 are negated by the fact while vacancies rose uptown, SO TOO DID PRICES. And EVERY market report for several months, from ALL the brokerage firms have shown this to be the case. How can this be, you ask? Simple. The supply of new rentals in Harlem etc. is almost entirely new, doorman buildings considerably nicer and considerably more expensive than most existing stock up there.

Your conclusion is idiotic, since M-S's sample is 5,000 units. His data per SF is accurate, and yours is pulled out your ass.

My LL wanted to increase my rent; a doorman, luxury building in Manhattan. I said no. So no increase.

Looks like one person finally agrees with Jason

Just the facts ma'am

@Jason, I own one condo unit that I rent out. I gave my tenant a rent increase last fall. I forgot to call either Dave at MNS or Jon at Elliman and tell them about it, so I don't see how either of those two companies know about the increase.

Secondly, and a much larger factor, I'm a REBNY agent. When I list a unit for rent, there's a place in the database for me to enter its list price. When I rent the unit, I mark it "rented" -- and that data can be picked up by anyone (DEGI, MNS, Streeteasy, whoever) who is watching the system.

So they can see the speed with which the unit rented. They can calculate a vacancy rate of units still available for rent over units listed.

But you know what data they don't have? The price that I rented the unit at. Did it go over or under list? Did the landlord make price or term concessions? Did the tenant pay fees that are customarily paid by the landlord?

Elliman may gather that data from its own agents but they don't gather it from me.

And the way the REBNY listing system works, as far as I know, they're not getting it from Bond, Corcoran, Citi-Habitats or Sotheby's either.

Without those subtleties, it's tough to say that rental "reports" are true indicators of the direction of the market.

ali r.
DG Neary Realty

Jason:

1. if average rent is up 10% while price/sq.ft is down 4.9&, that means that
collectively the apartments in the survey were 15.7% larger than in 2011

2. that number in fact understates the increased size discrepancy because rhe
bulk of 2012 survey apartments were identical or substantially similar to
2011 rental apartments

3. assuming that only 60% were - the actual percentage is probably closer to
90 or 90+, then the average size of 2012's "new apartments" would have had
to be 39.25% larger than those they "replaced": 15.7 x 5/2

4. if that same percantage were 80%, the average size of the 20% of "new" 2012
apartments would have had to be 78.5% larger than their 2011 counterparts

5. the only way to explain such discrepancies are (a) survey error, or (b) market
enlargement to include less desirable areas where $/sq.ft is lower: e.g., Harlem,
Washington Heights, FIDI - where rents plummeted after Hurricane Sanday and its
re-naming as "New York Harbor West" and the far west side, and/or (c) change in
unit miz to include more walk-ups and fewer doorman or ultra-luxury doorman units

6. on tht point, if I recall correctly 2011 had a high increase in ultra-luxury,
extremely expensive new kuxury developments

7. if a lot of such units rented and rented out in 2011 while far fewer rented out in
2012, the loss of those units would cause $/sq.ft. to decline

Ali:

1. you have also made a good point that REBNY data does not show actual lease
price or report owner concessions such as OP, 13 month lease, etc.

2. the reduction in owner concessions from 2011 to 2012 is the equivalent of a
rent increase but from what you wrote will not be picked up by Miller Samuel
because its input data does not report that information

I wonder if inododo will respond to rb, since when I made the point about prices increasing but ppsf decreasing, he didn't understand it or didn't want to understand it and had to switch to talk about Maseratis.

so my conclusion from these posts is that rents have stayed flat or so over the longer period (Ino's post) but the volatility is/was much higher than indicated in the same reports - during 08/09 declines were sharper than indicated as LLs gave free months rents, etc (which were not recorded), while 11/12 timeframe increases were higher than indicated as those same incentives were pulled which was also not recorded.

Another thing is that rent increases are highest in units rented to new renters vs. renewals, which would indicate that data out there overstates overall rent increases.

>Another thing is that rent increases are highest in units rented to new renters vs. renewals, which would indicate that data out there overstates overall rent increases.

How did you come to that conclusion?

> Heck, when I decided not to buy years ago I was figuring inflationary rent increases. The flat rents have been pure gravy.

same here! the 2% increase in our rent stab this year was satisfactory

JButton:

1. you cant reliably adjust Manhattan rents for inflation during the last say 10
years because Federal inflation statistics drastically understate actual inflation

2. look at Shadow Government Statistics or some of Riversiders's posts on that topic

3. that much said, whether higher or lower in inflation adjusted terms, they are likely
to be higher in nominal dollars this year unless - perhaps until - the US economy collapses

Obviously is ppsf goes down over a period and avg price goes up between sample periods, then avg apt size has increased between the apts sampled. That's assuming every apt is given a size when collecting stats, which may not be the case.

Given that 2012 ppsf, average, and median were all flat w.r.t. 2006, we can assume the apt sizes were about the same. There was no long-term shift in average apt sizes during the period. This may be a revelation to some people here, but those of us who understand the physical impossibility of a largely-static apt stock to morph in size are not surprised.

On the issues of "what about renewals, what about blah-blah", I think most of it amounts to sticking your head in the sand. While all those issues cause noise in values measured, the noise is idiosyncratic and did not change between 2006 and 2012. Cognizant of the existence of this noise, is it plausible that we say average annual increases of (say) 3-4% over the past 6 years? That'd amount to a 20-25% overall increase (they typical $4K apt becoming $5K), a magnitude of change appreciably larger than the measurement noise.

glad you've finally come around. Not sure why it took an extra day though.

By the way, nice use of big sophisticated words, particularly in your third paragraph. I picture you wearing glasses, makes you seem smarter. Maybe with a British accent. Definitely adds credibility.

RB, I think you bring up a valid point on the shifting apt mix in the study. However, I think the issue cuts both ways. While new developments are strongly biased towards less-desirable neighborhoods, they are also strongly biased towards being fancy. Those more-desirable neighborhoods biased towards crusty old apts.

cheerio

Inonda:

1. I think we are dealing with a 2006-2012 bowl-type market
2. with the edges on opposite sides of the bowl being 2006 and 2012

3. the rental market sagged badly after the sub-prime mortgage crisis broke
4. and probably moreso after Lehman's collapse

5. however, it now seems to have come back and somewhat passed prior peaks
6. I think if you did what Ali suggested, which is to look for rentals of identical units
or apartments in the same building and same line from 2006-2012, you would see that bowl
effect, a rent rise in 2012, and trends suggesting further rent rises in 2013

I just discovered something very interesting about SE. I had Jason on ignore, by mistake. As a result, this thread did not come up on the computer where I was logged in with my username. I only discovered it because I sat down today at a computer where I was not logged in, and this discussion was at the top of the recent activity. I thought, "how could I have missed this fun discussion?" I then logged in to make a comment on the price control discussion, and like magic, this thread disappeared; I could not find it anywhere, no matter how hard I looked. It did not exist. After logging in and out a number of times, a thought occurred to me. I logged in again and took Jason off "ignore," and voila! the thread materialized. Interesting SE feature - when you "ignore" someone, threads started by the "ignored" poster won't show up while you are logged in. You have to "un-ignore" someone if you want to read thread started by the ignored that you might discover while you are not logged in. Hope that makes sense, and maybe you all already knew that, but I did not and found it quite maddening while I was trying to solve the mystery of the disappearing thread.

RB, the peak was more in 2008 rather than 2006. This chart show Miller Samuel's take on it:

http://www.millersamuel.com/charts/manhattan-quarterly-rental-price-indicators

The Q4 2012 data not on that chart has ppsf at $49.88, about the same as Q4 2010. Maybe it's an anomaly, but to the extent you think the 2011/2012 trend will continue into 2013, that data point sits in stark contrast to the peak of $53.98 from Q2 2012. Note the lack of seasonality in the 2011/2012 trend. Prior peak was $53.50 in Q2 2008.

Inflation-adjusted charts tell a pretty consistent long-term story:

http://www.millersamuel.com/charts/manhattan-quarterly-rental-price-indicators-inflation-adjusted

Inflation-adjusted rents had a steep rise during the 1990's, had a sudden drop post-2000, held steady through 2007/2008, and have been deteriorating slowly since.

FWIW, I have looked at same-apt / same-line rents over time using SE. By and large, Miller Samuel's data is reflective of reality. His methodology is not as precise as the one used in Case-Shiller and the SE condo index, but the long-term picture reflects reality IMO.

>His methodology is not as precise as the one used in Case-Shiller and the SE condo index, but the long-term picture reflects reality IMO.

And so, what does it say? Does it say that prices are declining? Or that prices in this recent history are increasing but not increasing as much as in the prior year?

>Hope that makes sense, and maybe you all already knew that, but I did not and found it quite maddening while I was trying to solve the mystery of the disappearing thread.

NYCNovice, welcome to Jason the Retard land.

novice, how do you feel that no matter what jason posts, hb the sheriff is there? do you feel safer? do you need protection?

Hi COlumbiaCOunty!

whats your point?

Inonada:

Then I stand corrected; I do not have your access to information, and was estimating
from recall or recalled perception.

That much said, this entire discussion is ignoring two much bigger issues: that the US
economy might collapse within the next 2 years or so, and that this country might cease
to exist in its present form within the next few years, or even sooner.

As an investor, I do not consider any market or class of real estate within this country,
or for that matter much of the world, fully safe to invest in any longer, even from the
defensive perspective of preserving capital rather than growing it or earning large returns:
I would never have said that pre-9/11.

That is one reason I have such a negative view of most of this market's offerings of rent-
stabilied coops or condos

But those subjects really belong in a different threat dedicated specifically to them. Suffice
it to say that I believe this country is extraordinarily badly run today, and that Washington's
political class seems oblivious to endless ##s of structural problems with our nation, many of
which could cause extremely serious harm, such as the depletion of our underground aquifers,
which raise serious questions about the long-term viabilit of real estate in Arizaona and Nevada.

HB - You know I am a fan, but please stop using that word.
CC - I have no problem with HB's dissecting Jason's posts. Jason brings it on himself with comments such as the one he made to rb345 above. I have seen Jason accuse more than one poster of not understanding the subject matter at hand, when my reading of the given thread leads me to believe that it is in fact Jason who does not understand the nuances of the discussion that he is supposedly participating in. It's fine to not understand a discussion, but to then rudely dismiss others who are participating in the discussion on a higher level, well, that just invites comments like those HB makes.