One month's free rent! Pets allowed! These are some of the new strategies from Tishman Speyer for its market-rate rentals at Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village complex. Which is a far cry from its past as a complex where building workers would be rewarded with $150 gift certificates if they narced on pet-owning tenants.
The Post reports Tishman Speyer, which bought the development for $5.4 billion in 2006, is facing 5-10% vacancy rates, while the average Manhattan vacancy is 2%. Tenants association head Alvin Doyle said, "They were trying to rent market-rate apartments for whatever the market would bear, and this is what they thought it was, and apparently it isn't there right now." However, a spokesman claims the vacancy rate was higher because some units were being renovated.
Still, Doyle tells the Post market-rate tenants have left because of double-digits rent increases. We spoke to a market-rate tenant whose one-bedroom rent went up $500 last year (a 15+% increase); she feels Tishman Speyer is "spending on silly stuff, like branding, and not enough on the facilities themselves." Well, those model apartments' decorations need to be paid somehow.
And the new pet policy allows tenants to bring in dogs under 90 pounds and cats for a $250 one-time fee - a steal in the scheme of things.
