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During the month of August is usually a time when rentals in the
Manhattan city area start going like hotcakes. The summer means that many
families look for new homes and require apartments. It also means that recent
graduates and students come to the busy city to find new jobs. However, this
year it seems that landlords and owners have sky-rocketed the prices of rentals
and this has resulted in a huge number of vacant apartments.
Many reports have also seen brokers charging abnormally high fees for
apartment rentals, even though many advertisements claim to be “no fee
apartments”. According to The Real Estate Group, they have never seen such a bad
market for the summer months and can only speculate as to what the markets will
do in the next 12 months due to heavy mortgages. Dan Baum, CEO of The Real
Estate Group said that their agents are usually fighting to find any apartments
they can, but this year there are hundreds around. Another real estate firm,
Citi Habits has reported a booming season with no signs of a downward spiral.
They suggested that the bad season as reported by The Real Estate Group was only
analyzed from the 10,000 or so rentals from their database and is not entirely
accurate.
There seem to be many conflicting reports about apartment rental prices a
student, Dalia Vann, said that she couldn’t find a studio rental for less that
$1,200 per month. Another student was also disappointed to find that a small
apartment in Hell’s Kitchen for $2,250 and a staggering $4,000 agency
commission. Many students and other potential tenants have also been complaining
that landlords are unfair in their choice of tenant. Most of the time, they
don’t wait for people who have made appointments, they simply take the first
person that calls.
Some of the two-bedroom, doorman apartments, and the one bedroom non-doorman
apartments have seen a reduction in price despite the other major increases. As
can be expected, these are going like hot cakes and many people searching for
cheap accommodation in this central area will have to bite the bullet or find
another city to live in. The landlords that want high prices for their
apartments are resorting to overseas tenants and exchange students who can
afford the high prices and will even offer more money to secure their place.
This will see a subsequent decline in the property market in Manhattan.
As published by (Newsday,
NY)
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