Rent Rant

At left: Behold, the elusive washer dryer. Image via citi-habitats.com

My friend Nina sent me this article from the Wall Street Journal, proclaiming that rents in NYC are in a free fall. To see if this was true, I took a tour of some of the open properties in my neighborhood. FYI, I went with Tom McNichols of CitiHabitats. Tom was super informative and totally non-pushy--definitely a great guy to use if you want to go the realtor route. Here's his info: Cell: 917. 435. 0420, Email: tmcnichols@citi-habitats.com.

My findings? Rents are definitely lower than in the past, though reductions are totally landlord-dependant. I saw one place that was way larger than my one bedroom, that was going for about the same price (oh, and it had a washer/dryer. AMAZING). But I also saw one that was about a third of the size of my current digs, that was asking for almost $600 more/month. It seems to me that some landlords aren't yet ready to believe that the rental bubble has burst, and too bad for them: the last place I mentioned was one of 20 open apartments in that building.

My advice to those on the hunt: find a realtor you can trust and do not be afraid of lowballing. Tom was super open with me about how long the apartments we saw had been on the market, signalling to me that said places could be had for less than the asking price. 

Also: Tom mentioned that some "no-fee" apartments are traps. Here's why: larger buildings will use "no-fee" deals and offers of free months of rent in order to lure you into a lease with higher monthly rents. So, say you move into a place with "no-fee" and a free month's rent and the landlord offers to prorate it for you so you can have this beautiful space for the low cost of $2000/month. Sounds like a sweet deal, but it's not. Because come year 2, you're rent will skyrocket up to the full amount (which could be something like $2600/month).   Tom said that it's better never to prorate: tell the landlord you'd rather pay the fee or the rent, so that your lease lists a lower monthly rent.

In the end, I didn't see anything so fantastic that I would consider going through the trauma of moving. However, I did see proof that rents are falling, and that maybe I could be getting a better deal from my landlord. A phone call to him is in order, and obviously I'll update you on the result...