From left: Related Companies President Jeff Blau and a 51st floor residence at MiMA

The Related Companies has switched its strategy at MiMA in Midtown West, the Wall Street Journal reported, and will now lease the nearly complete top-floor units it had long been planning to sell.

Since development began on the 63-story, 814-unit building at 450 West 42nd Street near 10th Avenue, Related had said it would reserve the 151 apartments on the top 13 floors for condominium sales. But now the developer has plans to market them as ultra high-end rentals, with three-bedroom units commanding as much as $20,000 per month. [more]

From the August issue: New Yorkers are fleeing the city in the scorching summer heat, trading subway cars for the Hamptons Jitney and business casual for bathing suits. Even so, the residential rental market is as sizzling-hot as the temperature, brokers say.
According to a market report released by the brokerage Citi Habitats, the average second-quarter rent for a Manhattan apartment jumped around 10 percent from the same period of 2010. Taking into consideration landlord concessions like a month of free rent, the median net-effective monthly rent paid by Manhattan tenants grew to $2,888 in the second quarter, up from $2,700 in the prior-year quarter, according to a report from Prudential Douglas Elliman.
“The rental market is going absolutely crazy,” said Bruno Ricciotti, a principal at Bond New York Real Estate. In some desirable neighborhoods, he said, apartments are renting for higher prices than they did during the peak of the real estate boom. [more]

Rents have begun their summer climb, up 0.68 percent overall and 1.12 percent in doorman buildings in May, according to a recent report my MNS, formerly known as TDG/TREGNY. Year-over-year rents were up 6 percent compared with 2010. Inventory was up 2.93 percent for the month overall, however, with a 5.34 percent increase in non-doorman units. Meanwhile, the number of doorman building units fell by 1.89 percent.

MNS reports that rents fell 9.91 percent for Financial District non-doorman one-bedroom apartments. Renters looking for a downtown address should check out the deals before a wave of summer renters snaps up the inventory, the report suggests.

There are still good deals to be found in Harlem. Studios prices fell 7.41 percent in non-doorman units to $1,380, and 6.04 percent to $1,628 in doorman units. [more]

Average residential rents in Manhattan were $3,342 in the first quarter of 2011, or $47.62-per-square-foot when taking landlord concessions into account, according to a Prudential Douglas Elliman residential report released today. While the per-square-foot measurement barely edges out last quarter’s $47.45 fetching price, it’s 20.3 percent more than the $39.58 landlords earned per square foot in the first quarter of 2010. The median rent actually fell from last quarter and a year ago, but landlords made fewer concessions, bringing the overall price up for tenants. Manhattan rental apartments also spent less time on the market — 40 days, on average — than they did a year ago. Overall, the number of rentals in Manhattan was up 150 percent from the first quarter of 2010. TRD

It’s often said that New York City brokers speak their own language and, according to a new report, that old adage may be true. Certain adjectives and terms are common across the vast majority of apartment listings, according to Naked Apartments, a year-old site that not only lists apartments, but also helps match renters and brokers. The site, self-described as the “Match.com for New York real estate,” found that the phrases “in the heart of” and “just steps from” popped up in rental listings 524 and 420 times in its listings, respectively. [more]

Manhattan rental prices were relatively stagnant over the past month, according to the Real Estate Group NY’s March market report, which measures activity from mid-February to mid-March. The average rent increased by just .45 percent month-over-month, but showed strong gains over March 2010, with rent up 7.84 percent from a year ago. The priciest average rent was for two-bedroom doorman units in Soho, which asked $8,173 a month, while the least expensive was for Harlem non-doorman studios, which fetched an average of $1,593 a month. TRD [more]

From the 2011 Data Book: It’s not always cheap to rent an apartment in Brooklyn. (To wit:
check out the figures below for Dumbo, which has the priciest
one-bedrooms and two-bedrooms in the borough, as well as
Williamsburg, which, surprisingly, has the priciest studios.) But it is
still cheaper than Manhattan. In November 2010, renters could get
a Brooklyn one-bedroom for a 23 percent discount compared to
Manhattan (a mean of $2,093 a month in Brooklyn versus $2,725 in
Manhattan), according to the Real Estate Group New York. Studios
and two-bedrooms saw similar percentage discounts. Click on the link at the top of the homepage or here for more. TRD

Data Book [more]

Residents at 325 East 10th Street between avenues A and B are riled over ongoing renovations in part of their building, according to EV Grieve, which they say left their homes in horrendous conditions. The renovations, intended to turn the front of the building into a Hotel Toshi, a chain hotelier providing short-term apartment rentals, left residents without heat until Dec. 15 last year, sources claim, while alleged landlord neglect led to leaky ceilings and vermin in the apartment building’s hallways. Making matters worse, residents claim that they are still living without cooking gas. [more]

The Monaco, a two-tower rental development in Jersey City and the self-described largest rental complex in New Jersey, has received its first temporary certificate of occupancy, according to developers Roseland Property and Garden State Development. The leasing office at the 50-story, 524-unit project is slated to open April 1. The waterfront development includes 12,000 square feet of retail space and a 10-story parking deck. Rents at the Monaco range from $1,600 for studios to $5,300 for three-bedroom units. TRD

The average Manhattan rent remained relatively stable last month, while showing marked improvement over 2010, according to the Real Estate Group NY’s residential rental market report released today. The report, which tracks data from mid-month to mid-month, shows that average rent was up just .4 percent from mid-January, but up 8.01 percent from the same time a year earlier. Two-bedroom doorman units in Soho boasted the priciest average rent — $8,130 a month — while non-doorman Harlem studios had the cheapest, at $1,452. A recent report from Citi Habitats had similar findings. TRD [more]