Silver Towers at 42nd Street and 11th Avenue began renting in May.

Nothing beats free stuff. That may be the lesson learned from Larry Silverstein’s Silver Towers at 42nd Street and 11th Avenue, which is leasing up faster than expected after offering two months of free rent to new tenants. When the two 60-story glass towers began renting in May, Silverstein wondered aloud in the New York Times how he would lease up the largest and tallest rental project in the history of New York in the midst of a deep real estate slump. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared when we opened,” Clifford Finn, the managing director of new development marketing at Citi Habitats, who is heading up leasing at the project, told The Real Deal. “You open it when the market is declining, and have to wonder how we’re going to fill 935 market-rate apartments.” [more]