Landlords offer unsolicited incentives

As landlords worry about rising unemployment numbers and another potentially slow fall and winter rental market, many are offering tenants rent reductions they did not ask for. A tenant at the Related Companies’ Ventura, on East 86th Street, opened his lease renewal to find that the landlord had reduced his rent to $3,600 per month from $3,900. A real estate broker who also lives on the Upper East Side said her landlord offered her an unsolicited 20 percent rent reduction. But Fritz Frigan, executive director of sales and leasing at Halstead Property, said he is seeing fewer rent reductions and incentives being offered by landlords now than in the first quarter of this year.