All Articles Tagged "rental market"
Brooklyn Neighbors Share Landlords but Not Amenities
(New York Times) — Rare is the New Yorker not afflicted by real estate envy. In this city of dreams and dissatisfactions, where public housing and squished tenements sit an air shaft away from multimillion-dollar apartments, coveting thy neighbor’s home is as common as breathing in exhaust. Such sentiments may be more sharply felt in a waterside pocket of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where two luxury condominium developments, all towering steel and glass, abut low-slung, brick rental apartment buildings, built by the same developers but filled with low- and middle-income tenants. At Northside Piers, on the East River between North Fourth and North Fifth Streets, condos run from $385,000 to $2.9 million; the affordable component, 20 North Fifth, was filled by a lottery for eligible applicants, and rents started at $398. A block away, at the Edge (its advertisements promise “hard-core luxury”), condo prices run from $395,000 to $2.85 million. Rents on the affordable side, known as Edge Community Apartments, started at $886.
Identifying City’s Worst Landlords via Craigslist, and Trying to Penalize Them
(New York Times) — It is almost second nature for some New York City tenants to suspect their landlords of cutting corners when it comes to fixing a balky heater or securing dangling light fixtures. But now tenants can find out a lot more about any landlord’s portfolio by clicking a link, “NYC’s worst landlords,” on the apartment search pages on Craigslist. It provides information that highlights, with the help of Google Maps, landlords with the worst inspection records. The agreement with Craigslist is part of an eight-point package that Bill de Blasio, the city’s public advocate, is proposing on Monday to empower tenants and compel landlords to act more responsibly.
And with the support of the Bloomberg administration, the package would deprive landlords with dubious records of certain taxpayer subsidies; they would not, for example, be permitted to accept rental vouchers, and they would be denied new leases or lease renewals from city agencies. “We need a more aggressive and creative approach,” Mr. de Blasio said. “And when landlords know that there will be financial ramifications to inappropriate behavior, that is the best way to induce change.” Mr. de Blasio’s package arrives at a time when the issue of affordable housing for low-income families has become a more prominent concern. In Albany, tenant and landlord advocates are girding for a major battle over state rent regulations that are due to expire in June.
$2,000 Rent-Deregulation Limit Up in the Air
(Wall Street Journal) — As legislators in Albany debate the future of the city’s rent laws, a key provision of the law that has allowed landlords to deregulate at least 100,000 apartments may be up for a change. Since 1993, state law has allowed landlords to convert vacant regulated apartments into market-rate units when their rents hit $2,000 a month. Over the years, the real-estate industry has strenuously resisted efforts by renters’ advocacy groups to increase that amount. The battle has been renewed with rent regulations up for renewal for the first time since 2003. Only now, the dynamic appears to be changing: a major landlord group is signaling openness to hiking the limit. “We are prepared to look at a higher number,” Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, a powerful lobbying group, said in an interview last week. “It depends what the rest of the package is.” Rent laws, which limit the ability of landlords to increase rents for about 1 million apartments citywide, sunset in June. If they’re not renewed, landlords of these units will be able to raise their rents to market rates.
Democrats Press Cuomo on Rent Regulations
(New York Times) — A coalition comprising nearly every Democratic state lawmaker from New York City urged Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in a letter, posted below, on Wednesday to press for extending and tightening the state’s rent regulation laws as part of the budget deal he is negotiating with the Legislature. “If the state does not act, millions of working- and middle-class New Yorkers will be at immediate risk of losing their homes,” warned the lawmakers, about 90 of whom signed the letter to Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat. “We ask that you act boldly on tenants’ behalf by requiring these reforms to be a part of any budget agreement.” The state budget is due at the end of March. The rent regulations, which limit the rent that landlords can charge on more than one million apartments in New York City and its suburbs, are set to expire on June 15, raising fears that hundreds of thousands of tenants will face substantial rent increases and be forced to move.
City Losing Affordable Housing
(DNAinfo.com) — New York City is losing affordable housing at an alarming rate and needs new laws to protect what’s left, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said Sunday. Silver stood with tenants and other political officials on the steps of City Hall to unveil a report called ”The New Housing Emergency,” which shows that the city is losing more than 10,000 rent-protected apartments each year. ”If we do not act quickly to extend our rent laws, millions of working New Yorkers could lose their homes,” Silver said. The state’s current rent laws expire June 15 and must be renewed before then to protect the city’s 1.02 million rent-regulated apartments, Silver said. But Silver said the state needs to go one step further and strengthen the existing laws, making it harder for landlords to deregulate apartments. The current laws allow landlords to increase the rent when an apartment becomes vacant or when landlords make major improvements to the building.
Renters Beware: Prices Are Going Up
(Crain’s) — Renting an apartment in Manhattan is only going to get harder from here, according to a new report released Wednesday. Rents are up, landlords are no longer offering tenant concessions and the vacancy rate remains low. “Tenants will have to recalibrate their expectations,” said Gary Malin, president of Citi Habitats. “The harsh reality is renters better act or they are going to regret it.” The data feeding these dire warnings includes a 24% drop in the number of apartments on the market in February compared with the same month in 2010, according to Citi Habitats, the city’s largest rental brokerage. The vacancy rate in Manhattan dropped to 1.18% in February, down 0.36 percentage points from the same time a year ago and 0.08 percentage points from January alone. If the vacancy rate continues to drop, Mr. Malin expects it to sink below 1% by early April. Meanwhile, a mere 16% of the brokerage’s deals offered a free month’s rent and or payment of the broker fee as a tenant incentive, compared with 21% last month.
Should You Buy or Keep Renting?
(LA Times) — Housing isn’t the investment it used to be. Or is it? Certainly if you bought at the peak of the housing boom — say, 2004 or 2005 — it isn’t. But most people who took the plunge more recently think it is. In fact, 85% of a sample of folks who bought houses in the 12-month period from July 2009 to June 2010 view their homes as sound financial investments, according to a recent National Assn. of Realtors survey. Nearly half the 8,500 buyers and sellers polled consider their homes a better investment than stocks, while 3 in 10 say housing is at least on par with stocks. And the findings are roughly the same across all subcategories: new home or existing, first-time buyer or repeat offender, single or married, male or female.
10 Things Your Landlord Won’t Tell You
(Smart Money) — 1. “This building is in foreclosure.” In late 2009, Melody Thompson called her landlords to ask about the well-dressed picture-takers outside her four-bedroom Portland rental home. “Oh, we’re refinancing,” she remembers them telling her. Then in late April, a formal bank notification arrived in the mail, stating that the home was in foreclosure and would be put up for sale in late August. “I was immediately angry,” says Thompson, the executive director of Financial Beginnings, a financial literacy nonprofit. “They lied.” The sale has been postponed twice as the landlords apply for a mortgage adjustment, but Thompson is still hunting for a new place.
Housing Woes Drive Many to Rent
(AJC) — Joel Brady didn’t expect to find such a variety of high-end rental homes in metro Atlanta when he began looking for a residence inside the Perimeter. Currently renting a home in Alpharetta, Brady and his wife are among a growing group of ex-homeowners who aren’t interested in owning again right now. “We have owned and will likely own again, but we’re focused on renting right now,” said Brady, a hotel consultant. “The flexibility of renting, and being able to move when we need or want to move is very important.”
Rental Boom Provides Life Preserver for Developers
(Washington Post) — In 1904, brothers Guy and L.P. Steuart went into business together selling ice and coal from a mule-pulled cart. The two got into the real estate business in the 1920s and Steuart Investment has owned property between New York Avenue and L Street near Mount Vernon Square in Northwest D.C. ever since. The company resisted developing the site when Metrorail came to Mount Vernon Square and when the city’s new convention center opened in 2003, but now, Guy Steuart II says it is finally time to develop the property, a generation after his grandfather and great uncle acquired it. He recently finalized a partnership with Arlington housing developer Paradigm Development, secured an insurance company as a lender and applied for excavation permits so work can begin this month.
