Rents in New York City are reaching never-before-seen levels — even for the city’s wealthiest.
An apartment at the Benson, Naftali Group’s 15-unit luxury condominium on the Upper East Side, rented for $95,000, or $288 per foot, this week. For a 12-month term, the price per square foot appears to be one of the highest in the city’s history.
Douglas Elliman’s Lauren Muss, John Giannone and Jac Credaroli had the listing. Serhant’s Peter Zaitzeff brought the tenant.
Spanning almost 4,000 square feet, Unit 14 has five bedrooms, four full bathrooms and a great room with triple exposures overlooking Madison Avenue.
The anonymous owner of the unit at the Benson had bought the condo from the sponsor for $14.5 million in 2022. In 2023, they rented the same unit out for $65,000 per month, according to StreetEasy.
The Benson, at 1045 Madison Avenue, has amenities including a landscaped rooftop lounge, a cinema and a spa with sauna and steam rooms.
It’s difficult to ascertain a true priciest rent per foot given the lack of public records around rentals, but several say it’s one of the highest numbers they’ve seen for a standard 12-month lease.
“If it’s not the highest, it’s one of the highest ever,” said Miller Samuel CEO Jonathan Miller, an appraiser who releases a monthly report on the city’s rental market.
The luxury rental market has outpaced Manhattan’s overall red-hot market, according to Miller. In November, Manhattan’s median rent rose over 13 percent annually to a record $4,750, while luxury rents — defined as the top 10 percent of recorded rents in the month — rose almost 18 percent to a median price of $11,500.
One of the most expensive rentals on a per-square-foot basis in recent memory was Unit 57B at 220 Central Park South, which rented for $90,000 per month, or $336 per square foot, in 2023, according to StreetEasy.
The most expensive rent recorded on StreetEasy belongs to a set of units at Jeff Greene’s condo conversion at 100 Vandam Street that went for $150,000, as well as the penthouse at 24 Leonard Street, which Zaitzeff also rented out for $150,000.
Furnished residences that rent for a month at a time can rent for even more.
While cracking six figures on rentals is still rare, Giannone, one of the listing agents on unit 14, said he’s seeing a new threshold arising for the luxury market.
“I personally have never seen prices where they’re at,” he said. “When the high $100s per square foot for a rental starts to become like the norm, it’s completely different from what we’re used to.”
Muss said that they likely could have gotten even more for the unit, which was initially asking $85,000, but were given a single two-hour window to show it. Still, she said they had multiple bidders.
“There’s just no product, and there’s a lot of money out there,” she said.
Zaitzeff said his clients, who were renovating their townhouse and needed a place to stay, were willing to pay above the asking price to secure the deal.
“It speaks to the lack of inventory and people willing to pay what it takes to get a deal done,” he said.
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