UES Anecdote

Some of the sale listings have been on there for more than 100 days even before covid. Maybe the sellers are not eager to sell, and are willing to wait?

Landlords are more professional than individual apartment sellers and have stronger incentives against vacancy. Hence they are adjusting more quickly. They can always adjust rent up in a year, while sellers are done once sold.

How are you finding negotiability vs asking rent?

One landlord told me that in their portfolio, tenants are moving from midtown towards areas slightly further away like the 20s and 80s. I'm not sure I believe that since doing so means more time on the subway.

I haven't begun negotiating w landlords yet -- our lease runs out a few months so we're just scouting out locations / pricing right now.

Agree on the economic-orientation of landlords and the longer-term outlook of the individual apartment sellers. I gotta say though, eating 1-2 years of property taxes + maintenance fees by the individual apartment owners make the math pretty tough for them "waiting the storm out." Frankly the longer time passes, the more I'm in 30's camp of how all this stuff shakes out in next 5 years.

The other thing that's interesting to me is how many co-op owners are renting out their apartments (assume using the standard "2 out of 5 years" exemption) -- presumably these families are staying out of the city until Covid-19 clears. It'll be interesting to see how many co-op owners are willing to eat the substantial fees paid to the co-op when renting their units out, otherwise I don't see how pricing will be remotely competitive with no-fee luxury apartment buildings.

I call BS on the "gravitating away from Midtown" idea -- my wife has repeatedly said she doesn't want us to be using public transit / Uber Pool rides to get to our jobs in Midtown. Can't imagine that's an isolated viewpoint. The only reason I why I could see the landlord saying that is because his 80's / 20's portfolio has higher mix of larger units / outdoor space, which is consistent with my UES searches as well.