Non-doorman units drive rental market down

If you’re looking to rent on the Upper East Side or Soho and don’t need a doorman, now might be the time to make a move. While rents overall fell .6 percent in April, rents for non-doorman units on the Upper East Side fell 5.67 percent from a month ago, and non-doorman one-bedroom unit rents in Soho dropped 17 percent in the last six months, according to the Manhattan rental market report released today by the Real Estate Group of New York.

Overall, the average rent in non-doorman Manhattan units fell 2.84 percent this month, while doorman unit rents rose .8 percent, and inventory across the board rose 3.84 percent. But the report notes that rents are up 6 percent from April 2010, and with the spring renting season underway, TREGNY said it expects the market to pick up steam in the next few months — particularly in Harlem, where rents are becoming more competitive than those in the rest of Manhattan.

These findings are similar to the first-quarter rental numbers previously reported by The Real Deal, which showed negligible gains compared to the prior quarter, but a 20.3 percent increase over the first quarter of 2010. Currently, two-bedroom doorman units in Soho pace the market with an average rent of $8,938, while non-doorman studios in Harlem garner the cheapest rents at $1,513. The data TREGNY compiles is from a cross-section of 10,000 available listings in Manhattan, each with rents below $10,000, from mid-March to mid-April. TRD