any idea of the rentals inventory?

My subjective feel is that there are a lot of rentals out there, especially as I look through my saved list of private condos and coops.
Rental companies (especially Brodsky)only list a few apartments in each building - you have to go the buildings or call the rental offices.
For Archstone, here's a list provided by NYBits.com:

http://www.nybits.com/managers/archstone.html

as far as I know the rental market in going to drop till the end of the year because of:

-developers are leasing unsold units to increase the cash flow trying to repay the short term mezzanine debt
-manhattan unemployment rate increse and wage/bonuses decrease
-people are relocating elsewhere so less demand in rentals

I'll look for same update numbers about rentals inventory and get back to post it

The last bullet is actually untrue - NYC actually GAINED people in 2H2008, there was just a story on that all over every paper, CNN, etc, on states/areas loosing and gaining people. Surprisingly, NYC was not loosing. But yeah rents will go down for the other reasons. Especially in Manhattan.