The market for five-figure rentals may be improving faster than the market for small apartments, some real estate agents say. According to the New York Times, many high-end clients are often choosing to rent rather than buy.

Data from Streeteasy.com shows that more apartments priced over $10,000 per month were leased this May than in the same period in 2010 and 2009. Apartments in that bracket also went off the market faster and without price cuts.

“If you’re purchasing something at $20 million plus and you have those funds in some sort of account that’s bringing a good return,” it does not necessarily make sense to invest it all in an apartment, said Margaret Bay, vice president at Brown Harris Stevens. [more]

Listing agent Paula Del Nunzio of Brown Harris Stevens and images of 4 East 84th Street (interior listing photo obtained via the Times)

An Upper East Side townhouse originally commissioned by Frank Woolworth is about to shatter New York City records when it hits the market for $90 million, likely the highest-ever official asking price for a single-family home in Manhattan.

According to the New York Times, Brown Harris Stevens townhouse guru Paula Del Nunzio is readying that listing for 4 East 80th Street, the 17,676-square-foot mansion currently owned by the estate of fitness mogul Lucille Roberts, who died in 2003.

Industry sources said its $90 million asking price will by far eclipse any other for a townhouse in New York City history; Aby Rosen’s 22 East 71st Street and the mansion near Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s, at 1016 Madison Avenue, were each, in 2008, asking $75 million. Neither property sold, and both have since slashed their asking prices. [more]

In the market snapshot below, The Real Deal takes a look at what is going on in the Manhattan
rental market, from what neighborhoods have seen the most and least price changes to efforts brokers are making to land deals to the
abundance of amenities in rental buildings. Click on the arrow below to play the video.

[more]

Oliver Stone is considering using a $140,000 rental unit at Waldorf Towers in a movie

A six-bedroom, 6,000-square-foot apartment at the Waldorf Towers at 100
East 50th Street is on the market for $140,000 a month. If it rents, it will mark the highest price ever paid for a rental unit in the city. Cole Porter and Frank Sinatra have both lived
in the unit. Filmmaker Oliver Stone is reportedly considering it for
use in a film. Margaret Bay of Brown Harris Stevens, who has the
listing, said the last tenant left in April after renting the apartment
for five months, and it has been rented on a per-day or per-week basis
since then. [more]