I feel I am paying too much rent...

3 grand to live in a dorm? Ouch!

Why would it be in their benefit to renegotiate your lease? You signed a contract and now you want it modified so as to completely benefit you, only the law is on their side.

No harm in trying, unless you consider painful embarrassment to be a form of harm.

Nice bardamu, the person has a real question and your best response is an insult, a lecture, and then another insult.

Nyhome, you should try, do it in person, come armed with detail on comps, be friendly.

I am generally pro-tenant and anti-landlord, but I am with bardamu here. You signed a contract. If rents skyrocketed, they wouldn't come after you trying to raise your rent until your lease expired. I think the same principle works here, so I think you're stuck till november.

If it makes you feel any better, my guess is that the rental market will be as bad or worse at the end of this year, so you'll have a chance to renegotiate way down or get a great deal elsewhere.

in november you can ask for a decrease. My friends just got a successful decrease at Windsor Ct. We all had to pay more than market if we signed leases.

you can ask the landlord for a decrease but also offer to extend the lease...you both win, he keeps a tenant in place and you get a reduction. Sell it that it's good for the landlord, you're really thinking of him....you'd be amazed how people feel good when you put it like that.

Julia has it right: structure a win-win proposition. That's assuming, of course, that you like the place enough to stay past November.

julia: "you can ask the landlord for a decrease but also offer to extend the lease...you both win, he keeps a tenant in place and you get a reduction."

Why in the world would the landlord agree to this? You've already shown that you don't want to honor the current lease that you have. Why should he have any confidence that you won't just ask to re-renogiate any new lease that you come up with? A longer lease is no good if he doesn't think you'll honor it.

Face it: you made an idiotic move renting a 1-bedroom apartment for $3,000 a month in a mediocre neighborhood. You made your bed, now be an adult and lay in it.

Don't regard the above post. Landlords ABSOLUTELY will negotiate lengthening a lease in return for lower rent. And it hurts you NOT ONE BIT to ask. Worst thing? They say "no."

landlords lose money when they have to find a new tenant..painting, vacant apartment and they know we're heading into tough times. If he lowers the rent $250 a month he'll win you need to sell it to the landlord rather than asking for something.

Julia is right. It is a proven strategy, subject to the caveat that no-one can assure rationality on the other side of the transaction. Your LL has incentives to modify the lease. It needs to show its creditors a reliable rent roll, which is getting more difficult every day. So the LL should be happy to extend your lease. You are taking the risk of missing out on a better deal later. You may want to propose a six-month extension, knowing they will probably counter with one year. It might be useful to give them a list of things that need to be fixed in your apartment. You probably have some issues you let slide, but not if you're paying considerably more than new tenants. At the very least, if you have to live with the lease as signed, so should they.

Slope, almost every contract has a term which provides that it may be modified by a writing signed by both parties (some, not this one, have MAC – material adverse change – provision.) So asking for modifications is contemplated under the lease. The LL wants steady rent payments and a minimum trouble tenant. If you're providing that, you are worth more than an unknown replacement who might stop paying in three months (and take another six months to evict).

It's always worth a shot at renegotiation. If nothing else, it gives you a sense of where to begin negotiations in September, when you're deciding whether to move.

get a rent stab if you can and plan to stay in manhattan for the long run, that takes time so if you start looking for one by now you might be able to get on by Nov09 on and eventually will end up compensating what you are overpaying now. ie: take your losses now (ask for a discount and let them know that you plan to not renovate your lease if you dont' get one) and make sure you are out by Nov09 to a bigger & cheaper place!