With so many absentee kleptocrats buying $20 million Manhattan apartments, it’s getting tougher to find people rich and stupid enough to rent them out. The upside is that you can get a serious discount on a $30,000/month bungalow. When God closes a sauna door he opens the lid of a bidet.
According to a Douglas Elliman report on luxury rentals, the average listing spent an average of 56 days on the market last month, a 14.3% increase year to year.
"The rental market at the luxury end is seeing the same kind of trend that the sales market is seeing: a big amount of supply and perhaps some weakening demand,” Alan Lightfeldt, a data scientist with StreetEasy told BloombergBusiness, as he stroked a glass orb of juvenile electric eels with his long, sharp fingernails. "Accordingly, prices are beginning to fall."
For instance, this 2,800 square-foot 4-bedroom apartment at 50 Riverside Boulevard was $25,000 in November; now you can have it for $20,000, or what you might pay a few lawyers to take down video of yourself waving a Dunkin Donuts bag outside the hottest brunch spots.
Or what about this 3,000 square-foot 3-bedroom in Turtle Bay? In May it was listed for $30,000/month, now it’s renting for $21,000. Can you imagine waking up and auto-erotically asphyxiating to these sweeping views of the East River knowing how much money you saved?
Damn think about how many phone books you can chop with axes in this spacious living room (StreetEasy)
Don’t get too excited: the median Manhattan and Brooklyn rental prices both increased last month [PDF], to $4,032 and $3,047 month, respectively. Though some landlords are offering a month’s “free” rent as if they’re doing you a favor.
“Many landlords have relied upon incentives to keep their face rents high,” the president of Citi Habitats, Gary “No Need To Disrupt NYC Real Estate We’re Doing Fine Thanks” Malin told The Real Deal.
“Their prevalence is indicative of a Manhattan rental market that is still out of touch—and beyond the reach of many tenants.”
Speak for yourself Gary—this 400 foot studio above the Bowery Whole Foods is just $3,725. You can’t afford NOT to live here!
