NEW YORK—The Real Estate Group, a brokerage firm, found in its most recent monthly report that Manhattan's real estate market, so far impervious to the subprime mortgage crisis, may finally be turning—a potential boon for renters and buyers, but not so good news for property owners.
"While the market often sees a January rebound from December's historically weaker prices, this month, average citywide rents continued to cool across all apartment sizes and service levels," reads a letter from Daniel Baum, C.O.O. of The Real Estate Group.
"The Real Estate Group has received many inquiries from landlords—large and small alike—asking for guidance on how to market and price their properties in an increasingly unstable housing market. The combination of these factors reinforces our sentiment that the market has, in fact, turned."
The Manhattan Rental Market Report is based on data cross-sectioned from over 10,000 currently available listings located below 100th Street and under $10,000 a month.
The report breaks down buildings into doorman and non-doorman and finds prices ranging from a non-doorman building studio in Harlem for $1,105 to a doorman building two-bedroom in SoHo for $6,798.
"Layoffs and reported losses at some of the country's largest financial institutions sent the stock market and the value of Manhattan apartments downhill in January. Doorman rents in particular felt the chill, falling by 5.4 percent in the studio category and 4.3 percent in the one-bedroom category," according to the report.
The report projects that worsening economic worries and subsequent conservative spending may continue to push the rental market downward through the winter and the spring of 2008.
And here's the bright side: "…if the Federal Reserve's recent 0.75 percent rate cut stays the predicted nationwide recession, a traditional upswing may resurface in the spring, though more modestly than in previous years."
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