Prices Drop and Inventory Grows in Lower Manhattan
Asking rents for apartments in Battery Park City have fallen by more than any other neighborhood in the five boroughs, according to a new analysis from the online real estate database company StreetEasy, while the broader Lower Manhattan market has also retrenched, albeit to a smaller degree.
The StreetEasy report indicates that the median rent sought by landlords in Battery Park City has dropped by 12.7 percent, to $4,895. This drawback, which occurred over the 12-month period ending in February, also saw Battery Park City’s inventory of available rentals grow by almost a third (from 141 to 186 units) during the same period.
For Lower Manhattan as a whole, StreetEasy says, asking rents have declined by two percent, to $4,850, during this interval. Available rentals in the Financial District and Tribeca shifted during the past year, with a 12 percent jump in inventory (to 782 apartments) in the former neighborhood and a seven percent drop (to 243 units) in the latter.
The same study finds that prospective landlords are discounting their asking rents in all three neighborhoods, by a median of 1.9 percent in Battery Park City (the same as one year earlier), 4.7 percent in the Financial District (up from four percent 12 months earlier), and 4.9 percent in Tribeca (down from 6.7 percent a year earlier).
Meanwhile, the report states that asking rents outside Manhattan are rising, and that the City’s overall inventory of rental apartments fell over the past year.