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

Bad New York City landlords may often nab headlines but, as any property owner will tell you, tenants can often be problematic as well. Across the five boroughs there are hoarders, scam artists and serial evictees — as evidenced by the Village Voice’s list of top 10 worst tenants, published today. Among the offenders is a hoarder in a West Village rental apartment at 1 Christopher Street on the corner of Greenwich Avenue, whose apartment began to seep a black mold through the doorway, and a woman who allegedly filed a false domestic violence claim to get into Section 8 housing (a legal case is pending). [more]

After an erratic several months in Brooklyn and Queens, due largely to pent up demand and the first-time homebuyer tax credit, the residential market in the two boroughs may be stabilizing, according to a Prudential Douglas Elliman report covering both boroughs released today.

The median residential sales prices climbed in the fourth quarter compared to the same three months in 2009, while the number of sales dropped in both boroughs.

In Brooklyn, the figure rose 6.2 percent to $475,000, while sales dropped 29.9 percent to 1,468 from 2,093. In Queens, meanwhile, the price increased 5.4 percent to $369,000, as home sales plummeted 41.7 percent. Last quarter saw 2,483 sales in Queens, compared to 4,260 during fourth-quarter 2009. [more]

Noah Rosenblatt, founder of UrbanDigs

UrbanDigs.com is about a month away from launching a real-time Manhattan residential market analytics platform, a data service that reports market trends and figures.
Noah Rosenblatt, founder of brokerage and real estate research Web site UrbanDigs, said that the analytics program will run through a partnership with real estate database service RealPlus, and will feature a suite of user-friendly analytical tools. The program will be free, with an option to pay an approximately $15-per-month subscription fee for additional features.
Rosenblatt said that “the desire for more transparency” motivated him to pursue the analytics platform. While he wouldn’t say what specific market indicators will be analyzed until the platform goes live in the first week of May, he said that the platform will look at “every metric worth following in this market.” [more]

As many as 30,000 doormen, superintendents and porters in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island could be leaving their posts by the end of the month, according to Crain’s, as the workers’ union vote on whether they’ll strike over contract disputes. The latter three boroughs voted this week to strike if an amenable contract agreement hasn’t been reached by April 21. The Manhattan workers are expected to vote tonight. The possible strike comes after the union rejected the Realty Advisory Board’s proposed contract in March. Should the strike go through, approximately 3,200 buildings could see their staffers walk.

From the April issue: Is the Manhattan real estate market finally headed for recovery? Most experts agree that with tight lending and a large “shadow inventory” of unsold new condos, a full market recovery is a long way off. In fact, if interest rates begin to rise, prices may fall even more, though any further decreases are expected to be less severe than those that shook the post-Lehman Brothers market.

Still, it’s obvious to brokers, buyers and sellers that there’s been a vast improvement in the market even in the last few weeks.

This month, The Real Deal looked at the key factors that are helping the market to start the difficult process of a rebound. [more]

Spurred on by a recent rally in the U.S. dollar, more foreign buyers are taking a peek at New York City residential real estate, according to Reuters, causing optimism for some in the industry. Drew Glick, a broker with Brown Harris Stevens, said that international shoppers are ideal buyers, because they tend to be more financially stable than U.S. homebuyers. “The foreigners that are coming to buy now, they’re wealthy, they have all cash, they’re people who have weathered the financial storm that the whole world has been through,” Glick said. Although he said that there are fewer foreign buyers today than there were two years ago, Glick also said that as many as 15 to 20 percent of shoppers at some of his listings are from overseas.

From the May issue: In a year in which the real estate rules were all but suspended due to
the uncertain economy, behemoth brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman
cemented its position as the largest residential firm in Manhattan,
chipping away market share from its rival, the Corcoran Group. But as
the competition intensified between the two companies in this
challenging market, Corcoran bested Elliman in several key categories,
including the dollar value of its listings.  

[more]