The Manhattan rental market’s usual summer frenzy is absent this year,
according to the July rental market report from the Real Estate Group
New York. Rents have stayed flat or dropped this month compared to June and are
below 2008 levels. Vacancies have also increased between the two
months. The steepest year-over-year drops came in doorman one-bedroom
units, which saw rents fall an average of 10.34 percent, to $3,276 from
$3,654, and non-doorman two-bedrooms, where rents dropped an average of
9.12 percent, to $3,590 from $3,950. The greatest neighborhood-specific
decline was seen in non-doorman studios in Midtown, where rents have
fallen 15.34 percent year-over-year. TRD more

Source: TREGNY

[more]

Brooklyn-based
brokerage the Developers Group is merging with Manhattan’s Real Estate
Group of New York, creating one firm with reach in two markets. The new
firm, temporarily known as TDG/TREGNY, has 70 agents. Financial terms
of the merger were not released. Daniel Baum, co-founder of the Real
Estate Group, will be the CEO of the new firm. The
Developers Group was founded six years ago and specializes in marketing
new developments in Brooklyn, while the Real Estate Group, founded in
2004, focuses on Manhattan rentals.

In keeping with seasonal trends, rental demand in Manhattan has
increased week-over-week since the beginning of April and since last
year, according to a May rental market report from the Real Estate
Group New York. Rental deals increased 33 percent this April compared
to April of 2008. But rents are still down significantly from their
2007 numbers, the report said. “While we have seen some owners realize the increase in demand and
begin to test the market, we are concerned that, as what happened last
summer, owners that are too aggressive to raise prices or slash
incentives will find themselves holding excess inventory going into the
fall,” Daniel Baum, COO of the Real Estate Group, said in the report. TRD [more]

Several Manhattan neighborhoods saw sizable rent drops or increases in April, according to the monthly rental market report from the Real Estate Group New York.

The steepest decreases came in Gramercy Park, Chelsea and Tribeca. Non-doorman one-bedrooms in Gramercy Park saw a 9.7 percent drop in rents, and non-doorman two-bedrooms in Chelsea saw a 9.2 percent drop. Doorman two-bedrooms in Tribeca saw a 9.4 percent decline in prices. The largest year-over-year change was a 10.4 percent drop in doorman studio rents, to $2,300 this month from $2,567 in April 2008. TRD
[more]