Thursday, October 30, 2008

Stories from the front lines of renting: Recent Yale grads get a deal on an apartment in the LES


From The LES Free Press, written by students in the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism:

The apartment is tiny. None of its three bedrooms holds a bed bigger than a twin. But it’s renovated, clean, and it’s in the middle of the fast-moving Lower East Side – the perfect place for three newly-minted Yale graduates to make their first mark on the city. Apartment hunters Andrew Cedotal, Allison Guy and Danielle La Rocco are on the fence, however. For almost $3,300 a month, they expect more space.

“It’s a great apartment, but it’s a little smaller than we’re looking for,” La Rocco says to the agent showing the place.

What happens next is something that would have been unheard of even a year ago, but that real estate experts say is becoming more common: the agent offers to broker a better deal if the three will take the apartment today. Within minutes, the trio has reduced their rent by a few hundred dollars a month, and La Rocco is dispatched to get a money order while the other two fill out applications. The deal is done.

Do episodes like this mean Manhattan’s notoriously bullish rental market is softening? Daniel Baum, a broker who runs the Real Estate Group, an industry organization that puts out an analysis of Manhattan rental prices each month, says yes.

2 comments:

  1. If these landlords are like most of them down here, it means that 1.-the previous rent stabilized tenants were harassed out of the apt and the legal rent is supposed to be less than half that price and/or 2.- the landlords jacked up their original asking price by a few hundred dollars so it would look like a great "deal' when they offered to knock that amount off the rent. The other factor is these dumb rich kids who think they're being really "tough negotiators'.

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  2. New people are still moving in to the teensy apartments in my building going for over $3000, and renovations continue to even more apartments that were previous rent stabilized in my building. I can hear the construction workers as I type. If I wanted to live in a dorm I'd go back to college.

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