NYC Market Rents have declined; vacancies up - Bloomberg

By Sharon L. Lynch Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Manhattan apartment rents fell for a fourth consecutive month in November and vacancy rates reached 2 percent for the first time since at least January 2007. Across all sizes of apartments, from studios to three bedrooms, rents fell 2.2 percent to 4.9 percent, with the biggest drop coming for the smallest apartments. Studios rented for an average of $1,808,... [more]

By Sharon L. Lynch Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Manhattan apartment rents fell for a fourth consecutive month in November and vacancy rates reached 2 percent for the first time since at least January 2007. Across all sizes of apartments, from studios to three bedrooms, rents fell 2.2 percent to 4.9 percent, with the biggest drop coming for the smallest apartments. Studios rented for an average of $1,808, down from $1,901 in October, New York- based real estate broker Citi Habitats said today in a report. Rents are declining as New York City is forecast to lose as many as 160,000 jobs in the recession and Wall Street firms including Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. are firing workers. “There’s a lot of volatility out there. A lot of people are worried about their personal circumstances,” Citi Habitats President Gary Malin said in an interview. “Everyone is definitively conscious about price.” The city’s most expensive neighborhood remained the Soho/TriBeCa area, with studios renting for an average of $2,395, one bedrooms for $3,637, two bedrooms going for $5,300 and three bedrooms for $7,045. Rents are falling in Manhattan as apartment sales also decline and the inventory of unsold properties rises. Buying Slows Sales fell for the third consecutive quarter and inventory rose by a third even in the three months ended Sept. 30 even as prices continued to extend a five-year streak of gains, New York- based real estate appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and broker Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate said in a report on Oct. 3. Transactions dropped 24 percent to 2,654 from a year earlier and the number of apartments on the market increased to 7,003. The median price of a condominium and co-op jumped 7.4 percent to $928,263, the second highest on record. The third-quarter Manhattan property market results were the first to capture sales since Bear Stearns & Co. was forced to sell itself to rival JPMorgan Chase & Co. in March after customers and lenders fled on speculation the company was short of cash. To contact the reporter on this story: Sharon L. Lynch in New York at sllynch@bloomberg.net Last Updated: December 4, 2008 12:44 EST [less]