More Coverage of the Landlord Renegotiation Phenomenon

New York Magazine asks if right now is the time to negotiate with your landlord. Read about it HERE.

I’ve been covering this question for some time: HERE, HERE and HERE

“How to Reduce Your Rent” via the WSJ

Clicking around today on Curbed, I came across a link to an awesome letter that a Wall Street Journal blogger wrote to her landlord when they received a lease renewal with an increase this past winter.  How did the blogger get a $300 rent reduction? By writing a rational, well-researched letter. She spoke to recent arrivals in her building to find out what they were paying, checked out Craigslist, cited articles in the newspaper and in the end was happy with her savings.

WNYC Radio Report on Rentals

Listen HERE to Curbed.com’s editor Lockhart Steele discussing the rental market, including the issue of negotiating with your landlord or moving out into a more affordable unit. There’s a lot of great stuff as readers share their experiences in the comments section.

Important Ruling on Lease Breaking

FYI–The NY State court of appeals has ruled that lease-breaking is a no go. Even if you leave you are still financially responsible for fulfilling the terms of the lease and pay through its date of expiry. More info via City Limits, with extra coverage over at brownstoner.

How to Get the Apartment You Want, Part 3: Preparing Your Paperwork

The number 1 thing you can do to ensure you get the apartment you want is to have your finances and paperwork in order before you start looking. Unlike most cities, in NY you are not just renting an apartment–you are also applying to rent an apartment and just like applying for a job or college admission, you want to present yourself in the best possible light . Being organized and prepared makes you look like a way better potential tenant than all those other people scrambling to find their 2006 tax returns or who can’t even remember their last landlord’s full name.

How to Get the Apartment You Want, Part 2: Questions of Timing

Today I will address questions of timing in an apartment search. The first question is “how long should it take to find a rental apartment?” and the second question is “how many weeks before you want to move should you start looking?” There is no hard and fast answer to either of these questions and they are undoubtedly related and thoroughly intertwined. How long you spend looking for an apartment depends on how picky you are and how realistic you are about the mutability of rental market conditions that may preclude the very existence of your “dream” apartment. After seeing 30 apartments over a series of two months and having them all be insufficient, it might be the case that what you desire does not exist and you will need to adjust your expectations so they are more in line with reality.

What are the Top Five Things That Renters Look For?

Courtesy of Apartment Therapy. Obviously, the top five things are not the same for everyone but there were a lot of repeats: on-site laundry, nice kitchens and baths, aesthetically neutral decor and storage space were high on many people’s lists. What are the main features you desire in a rental apartment?

A Private Company as Guarantor? Introducing “Insurent” via the NY Times

It sounds like a strange idea at first: prospective tenants without a sufficient credit history can now hire a private company to guarantee their rent. For a flat fee, a new insurance company called “Insurent” will guarantee your rent to a landlord for up to one year. For people newly arrived in New York or those without a parent to act as guarantor, this idea is a lot less strange. The concept of the guarantor is uniquely New York and as rents rise, the time-worn formula that landlords use to calculate whether you can afford the rent (40x the monthly rent) has gotten more difficult for new hires and recent graduates to afford. For a $2000 a month apartment a tenant is expected to earn $80,000 a year and the guarantor formula (80x the monthly rent) requires guarantors to earn $160,000 to help a son or daughter rent that same apartment.

Rental Q&A Courtesy of the New York Times

“Paying Moving-Out Fees in a Rental in a Condo?”

“Stunned By a Lease with a 25% Rent Rise.”

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes Search for a Manhattan Rental!

Of course, when you’re looking to spend about $200,000 per month on a rental apartment, it better be pretty darn special…[via the New York Post]

Landlord has Lease Renewal Question, via Brownstoner

“Renter hasn’t responded to Lease Renewal–what to do?”

Rental Q&A Courtesy of the New York Times

“How ‘preferential’ are some rents?”

“Can a landlord remove a tenant’s door lock?”

“Renewal leases and landlord’s obligations?”

Do You Know About the Rentometer?

There’s an article in the New York Sun today about the Rentometer! This handy website has been on the sidebar of this blog since day one and is one of my favorite web-based real estate tools. It provides great and accurate free information to tenants and landlords alike and the creators of the site plan on adding more features, including listings. I was glad to read that rentometer.com also has a sister site, rentomatic, offering services for landlords, such as online rent payment. It is one of my hopes that the rental business can move in the direction of less paper and more web-based systems. Particularly in New York where so many people come from elsewhere for a few short days to rent apartments before moving here permanently, it would be fantastic if prospective tenants could easily go through more of the rental process via the web.

“The Hunt”: NY Times Features Renter’s Apartment Search

Did you know that the NY Times “The Hunt” column also features renters? This past weekend’s column covered the apartment search of a Judson Vann, a very meticulous young man with a lot of furniture who needed to find a reasonably-sized one bedroom in Manhattan for less than $2500. As a broker, this story is very familiar to me: people want a decent amount of space for around $2000. Often, this is a tall order. In the $2000 price category it’s rare to find anything above 650 square feet in most parts of Manhattan and I often find myself getting discouraged and encouraging people to consider moving to Brooklyn or upper Manhattan.

However, just because something is difficult does not mean that it’s impossible and if you have time to keep looking then you should do so. I always say that there is no perfect apartment and you should really be searching for an apartment that is 85% perfect. A combination of persistence and a little bit of compromising is what paid off for the guy in the article: he eventually found a large railroad apartment on Ninth Avenue at a price he felt comfortable paying. I can identify where Judson’s compromising led to his success: railroad apartments can be a great value and the further west or east you go the more space you are likely to get for your money.

Manhattan Apartment Vacancy Rates Up!

Good news for renters: vacancy rates are up so you’ll have more choice and things might get a little less frantic. What’s striking about this chart is the fact that current vacancy rates are comparable to December 2007, during the slowest rental period of the year. If this trend continues, we can likely expect to see rental prices declining a bit even in the summer. There are nearly twice as many apartments available now compared to June 2007. Please don’t get the idea that there is some glut of amazing $1900 one bedroom apartments in doorman buildings as my experience indicates that the most desirable and well-priced units are being snapped up as quickly as before.