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Renters Are Celebrating In This Recession
WHEN Whitney Pettyjohn and her 19-year-old sister, Chelsey, moved to Brooklyn last August, the best deal they could find in their price range was a two-bedroom in Bushwick with unreliable heat, nine blocks from the Morgan Avenue stop on the L train. It cost $1,700 per month.
When they looked again this year, they found a very different market. Four weeks ago, they moved two stops closer to Manhattan, into an apartment with more character and more storage for the exact same price.
“We’re one block from the subway,” Ms. Pettyjohn, 24, said. “It’s like living in a dream!”
Rents are down throughout New York. According to the February Manhattan Rental Market Report produced by the Real Estate Group, a New York brokerage firm, rents in the borough have fallen “across the board.”
The biggest drop was in studio apartments in doorman buildings, which have fallen 8.33 percent from the same time last year.
Many people who signed leases in the bubble years are paying much more in rent than what their apartments would get today. So when their leases expire, some New Yorkers are trading up for better deals, finding comparable places for less money or nicer apartments that do not come with a big rent increase.
“No one’s willing to pay more now, because there’s always another deal next door or down the block,” said Georgia Kaporis, an associate broker at Citi Habitats. “They’re just upgrading for less.”
Erika Allen, for example, moved earlier this month from a first-floor studio in the East Village between Avenues B and C. Only through a remarkable New York-style exercise in stacking belongings and maximizing space did Ms. Allen, 21, a journalism student, manage to share the place with her boyfriend, Clark Hassler, 25, a professional skateboarder. (Picture shoe storage above the refrigerator.) They were paying $1,885.
For $15 more a month, the couple now have a one-bedroom five blocks from their old apartment that is closer to the subway, has a working fireplace and, perhaps most important, more privacy.
“I was looking forward to having a bedroom door,” Ms. Allen said. “I love to have people over, but it’s hard when you have to have them sit on your bed. It’s just crazy the things you get used to.”
Though more apartments are becoming more affordable as rents come down from their lofty peak, New York prices might still seem shocking to the uninitiated.
In February, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in a nondoorman building was $2,632, according to the Real Estate Group. It was $3,395 for a one-bedroom in a doorman building.
“Probably somebody who’s relocating would still be surprised today: ‘This is the size of apartment I get for this price?’ ” said Caroline Bass, an associate broker with Citi Habitats. “But New Yorkers think this is great right now. Maybe you appreciate it more if you spend more time here.”
Another bonus for New Yorkers concerns the broker fee, which has usually been paid by the renter and can add 15 percent of a year’s rent to the initial cost of leasing an apartment. These days, as attracting good tenants has become more difficult, owners have started paying the broker fees themselves.
According to Halstead Properties, out of 4,230 open and exclusive listings for apartments between Feb. 15 and March 15, 30 percent offered owner payment of the broker fee. Over the same period in 2008, only 8 percent of Halstead’s apartments offered that incentive.
A big jump, but it still leaves the majority of apartments requiring tenants to pay the fee.
“There’s so much media attention paid to no fee, free rent, rental prices coming down, that now everybody has an image that everything is a no fee,” Ms. Bass added. “But it’s not true.”
Liz Sterling, a client and friend of Ms. Bass, stepped up to a larger, less expensive apartment in a neighborhood she prefers, but to do so she had to pay a broker fee. It was, she said, worth it.
“I did not think I could get an apartment as nice as I did,” she said.
When she moved into a studio apartment in Midtown last year, $1,800 was the best deal she could find. “It was the biggest place I looked at that I could afford,” she said. (CLICK THE LINK BELOW FOR COMPLETION OF THIS ARTICLE AT NEW YORK TIMES)
ARTICLE BY ELIZABETH A. HARRIS
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