Today, the Post takes a look at the latest real-estate industry reports ... and finds that rentals are getting — no shit! — more expensive. Manhattan rentals increased 8.6 percent last year. The average Manhattan apartment rent is now $3,309 a month.
The East Village is below that rate, with a downright cheap average of $3,027 a month. The above chart breaks it down by apartment size... Meanwhile, according to the report, the average vacancy rate in Manhattan was just 0.96 percent.
really
The rent stabilization laws were enacted to prevent landlords from gouging during times of low vacancy rates. Good thing the laws are so strong and landlords can't get around them!
ReplyDelete@evfli. You are, of course, correct. And in fact I believe there is a clause in the law that allow's rent control/stabilisation to lapse if the vacancy rate ever reaches 5%, I believe. It has not happened since the laws were first written after WW 2.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to know what jobs make these prices affordable.
ReplyDeleteGoggla- Or better yet, what type of jobs the parents of the current tenants have to allow them to afford paying their children's rent for them.
ReplyDeleteI know a few people who make 100 grand a year, and they can't afford to live in Manhattan. They live in Queens, and even that is a bit of a stretch as far as being able to save money.
This chart is unreal. And sickening.
It's as if a sort of rental bubble is forming. It can't possibly keep getting higher and higher, because at a certain point even the very wealthy won't pay 5,000 a month for a tiny studio.
This market has to collapse at some point.
Evfli
ReplyDeleteFrom 1985 until 1991, tenants saw to it that rent regs were renewed (rent laws are not permanent, they have to get renewed after a proscribed period of time) by the governor and state legislature as straight extenders, without weakening amendments. Then, when the state rent laws came up for renewal in Albany in 1993, the landlord lobby (one of the most powerful lobbies in NY state BTW) flexed muscle. They used paid-for puppets in the State Senate, mostly upstate GOPers with few-to-no renters in their districts, to force downstate pro-tenant legislators to accept weakening amendments as the cost of extending rent laws for another period of years. Those amendments included vacancy decontrol, an income-based eligibility provision, and the basic elimination of penalties for landlords who failed to register their apartments every year. The laws were extended until 1997. Then Pataki was elected in 1994. If it weren't for Shelly Silver, labor unions, and the active involvement of thousands of tenants, Pataki would have allowed rent laws to end overnight in June of 1997. As it was, a good number of pro-landlord amendments made it into the final bill. Pataki's plan was to gradually phaseout rent laws and he was pretty successful. 2004 was another very bad year for tenants.
This past year, Cuomo and the Dems forced tiny, baby steps back in the direction of us tenants. We can have strong rent regulation in NY again, but it's gonna be up to tenants to make that happen.
If anyone is interested in strengthening our rent laws and CLOSING these stupid loop holes (such as vacancy increases!) contact Tenants and Neighbors (tandn.org). The landlords are great at convincing market rate tenants that stabilized tenants are their enemies, but EVERYBODY deserves protection from gouging!
ReplyDelete