Empty Rental Inventory and Declining Sales Values Signal Softening Residential Landscape
A pair of real estate data analyses point to a mushy market for apartments in Lower Manhattan. In a report that spotlights local rentals, the online real estate database company StreetEasy finds that there are 790 empty apartments available in the Financial District, a 20 percent jump from one year earlier. The same report finds that while rents are still rising Downtown, the rate of increase has slowed to a crawl, with asking rents inching upward just 1.2 percent from the same period in 2023. This was the second smallest increase for any community in Manhattan, trailing only Midtown South, where rents did not budge during the same interval. That noted, the median asking rent in the Financial District is still substantial, at $4,555 per month, according to the report.
A second report, from Zillow, focuses on apartments for sale and documents that two Lower Manhattan neighborhoods have slipped precipitously in that company’s compendium of most expensive zip codes in America, while a third has fallen out of the top 100 entirely. The analysis notes that a pair of zip codes in Tribeca (10013 and 10007) have fallen from fifth to 31st place, and from 16th to 47th place, respectively. Northern Battery Park City (zip 10282) has disappeared from the top 100 ranking altogether.
Shifting to a shorter horizon, Zillow looks back over the prior 12 months in local property values, and notes that homes in every Lower Manhattan zip code but one have declined in value. Southern Battery Park City (zip 10280) has seen prices soften by 1.7 percent, according to Zillow, while Tribeca has seen retrenchments of 3.3 percent (zip 10013) and 4.5 percent (zip 10007). In the Financial District, prices have fallen by 5.3 percent (zip 10006), 7.1 percent (zip 10005), and 3.1 percent. Only in Northern Battery Park City (zip 10282) did prices notch gains over the last 12 months, in this case of 9.3 percent, according to Zillow. (The seeming inconsistency between rising prices in northern Battery Park City and 10282 being removed form the list of 100 most expensive zip codes is due to three factors: the price baselines were different, prices rose more elsewhere, and these two developments took place in different time frames—five years and one year.)
For the year ahead, Zillow projects that prices will fall across the board in Lower Manhattan, with a predicted softening of 2.2 percent in Northern Battery Park City, and 0.8 percent in the neighborhood’s southern section. In the Financial District, the company anticipates prices falling by 1.2 percent, 1.1 percent, and 0.8 percent, in zip codes 10006, 10005, and 10004, respectively. And in Tribeca, the company estimates that values will decline by 1.4 percent and 1.9 percent, in zip codes 10007 and 10038, respectively.