For all the talk about omnipresent luxury condos, New York is still a rental town.
Even though new condo towers may seem numerous, they actually contain a tiny number of apartments relative to the city’s overall stock. New York City’s 2 to 1 rented-to-own ratio hasn’t really changed much since 2005, according to city officials, brokers and developers.
But despite being the biggest piece of the housing pie (or perhaps because of it), rentals are an elusive target when it comes to pinning down numbers about leasing activity. Compared with the sales side, there are comparatively few brokerages that even try.
Those that do attempt to generate numbers count differently, which has prompted quibbling over what’s the best data-collection method.
How to calculate the city’s rental vacancy rate is one point of contention.
According to Manhattan-based brokerage Citi Habitats, it stood at 0.86 percent among Manhattan rentals from June to September. Broken down by neighborhood, Chelsea had the lowest vacancy rate, at just 0.59 percent, while apartments were most available in Battery Park City, which had a 1.16 percent rate.
To divine these figures, Citi Habitats looked at “key buildings in different neighborhoods that are historically very popular,” said Gary Malin, the firm’s chief operating officer. At the end of the month, a broker checks to see how many apartments are available in a particular high-rise, and that number is divided by the number of occupied units, Malin said.
But that snapshot approach produces inaccurate numbers, according to Citi Habitats competitor The Real Estate Group New York, which says it refuses to provide vacancy statistics since there’s no comprehensive way to tabulate them.
“You can’t do it,” said Daniel Baum, the brokerage’s chief operating officer. “I would be OK if Citi Habitats said their numbers were based on a cross-section of the market. But to make a statement like, ‘This is the vacancy rate,’ I can’t agree with that evaluation.”
The two also differ on how to tally rental numbers. The Real Estate Group New York counts the asking price for apartments. Citi Habitats counts the price at which the apartment actually leased, which could be higher than the asking price if a bidding skirmish erupts.
“I don’t really like to comment on other people’s reports,” Malin says. “But you need to do these reports based on what is actually rented.”
For its reports, Citi Habitats analyzes 1,000 listings a month, which are mostly from deals its 700 agents have completed, but also information from owners it’s worked with before, Malin said.
The firm, which is now a sister company of the Corcoran Group, started out with a focus on rentals but has since branched into sales. Citi Habitats does not care if an apartment is rent-stabilized or not, Malin said, though it probably misses hundreds of listings from landlords who lease their dwellings directly, without the help of agents, he said.
The Real Estate Group, which is a smaller firm with about 20 agents, meanwhile, comes up with its analysis by studying 10,000 listings located below 100th Street in Manhattan, Baum said. Excluded are luxury properties (in excess of $10,000 a month in rent) and rent-stabilized properties, since landlords of those buildings don’t usually share figures anyway.
The sources of those 10,000 listings are fourfold, Baum said. One is the firm’s own Rolodex, which includes 2,000 landlords “who report directly to us,” Baum said. He also taps the database of the Real Estate Board of New York, as well as the Online Residential Web site, which claims to pool listings from more than 250 real estate companies. Listings also come from RealPlusOnline, another password-protected proprietary system.
Also, the Real Estate Group likes to pluck listings in the middle of the month, because at the beginning and end, “there is a lot of fluctuation,” Baum said. Taken together, it makes for reports that Baum claims are “clearer and more accurate.”
As for the vacancy issue, Matt Engel, vice president of Langsam Property Services, which manages 10,000 apartments citywide, doesn’t release monthly or quarterly reports. But he does feel that the sub-1 percent vacancy rate derived by Citi Habitats is too low.
In his buildings, on any given day, the number is closer to 2 percent, Engel said. “It takes at least three weeks to paint a place and then find a person to rent it.”