Renters move back to Manhattan

Renters in the outer boroughs who were previously priced out of Manhattan are moving back as prices fall. For just $100 more a month, a publicist left his Greenpoint apartment for a Lower East Side unit (although it is half the size of his Brooklyn home), and an editor left Sunset Park for Midtown, receiving a month of free rent. In the first three months of the year, one-bedroom rents in Manhattan fell 6.7 percent compared to the previous year, while Brooklyn one-bedrooms saw rents drop 3.2 percent, according to Citi Habitats and Ideal Properties Group. Only 9 percent of renters moving to Brooklyn were from Manhattan during the first three months of the year, while nearly a quarter of renters migrated from Manhattan to Brooklyn during the same time last year, according to Ideal.