Manhattan Rental Market Report

The Manhattan Rental Market Report is a monthly report that tracks the average rental prices of apartments in the residential real estate market of Manhattan, New York. It is currently the only report that compares fluctuations in Manhattan rents on a monthly basis. The data is taken from thousands of current rental listings below 155th Street and sorted by service level, neighborhood and apartment size. The graphs compare mean citywide rents, citywide trends for the year and neighborhood rental trends. It is released free of charge and is available in HTML and PDF formats on the MNS’s website.
History
Originally conceived and authored by then COO Daniel Baum, The Manhattan Rental Market Report was first released in January 2007 by Flatiron-based brokerage firm The Real Estate Group NY(TREGNY), now doing business as MNS. Its aim was to provide transparency into the current Manhattan rental market and supply property owners with a resource to competitively price their units—something that was seriously lacking prior to the report's release. Baum was not satisfied with the quarterly data provided by other brokerage firms, as they did not cover the entire Manhattan market, nor did they adequately reflect market fluctuations in a timely enough manner. There was no clear portrait of the market available and Baum felt a remedy should be made. With this objective in mind, the Manhattan Rental Market Report was created.
Today, the report is compiled using data from over 10,000 available listings located below 155th Street; ultra-luxury properties with rents exceeding $10,000 a month are omitted in order to obtain a more accurate monthly rental average. Data is aggregated from the MNS proprietary database and sampled from a specific mid-month point to record current rental rates offered by landlords each month. It is then combined with information from the Real Estate Board of New York’s Real Estate Listings Source (RLS), OnLine Residential (OLR.com) and R.O.L.E.X. (Real Plus). However, when it was first released on the TREGNY website in January 2007, the report was sampled from only 3,000 listings below 100th Street and consisted solely of citywide rental average bar graphs. Doorman and non-doorman studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartment prices were featured with limited commentary.
In February 2007, line graphs were introduced to show monthly changes in citywide rental prices, as two months' worth of data was available for comparison. Individual graphs were also created for Midtown East and TriBeCa, where drastic changes had taken place from the month prior; these were included in “Neighborhood Spotlight Price Trends” and illustrated the fluctuations in price for service and non-service studios, one-bedrooms and two-bedrooms in those areas.
The March Manhattan Rental Market Report expanded to include line graphs for each of Manhattan’s 14 major neighborhoods including the Upper West Side, Upper East Side, Midtown West, Midtown East, Murray Hill, Chelsea, Gramercy Park, Greenwich Village, East Village, SoHo, Lower East Side, TriBeCa, Financial District, and Battery Park City. Combined with the citywide averages, the report now boasts over 50 graphs to illustrate residential rental market changes.
In July 2007, TREGNY again re-formatted the Manhattan Rental Market Report for easy reading and interpretation. It now includes a “Quick Look” section—a brief summary of the month’s most notable trends, as well as tips for renters.
At the end of December 2007, with a full year's worth of data to be considered, TREGNY released their Year-End Market Report 2007. This specialized report was designed to reflect the overall climate of the Manhattan rental market in 2007, based upon the data collected in the monthly market reports. In it are citywide average price changes, as well as graphs depicting mean rental prices for the year across Manhattan and in each neighborhood. Also included is a “Neighborhood Price Trends” section with charts showing percentage increases or decreases in rents for studios, one- and two-bedrooms in the service and non-service categories for the year.
January 2008 saw the addition of Harlem to the list of neighborhoods highlighted in the report, extending the boundary of data sampling, formerly 100th Street, to 155th Street.
Inspired by a specialized graph created for the March 2008 report, TREGNY began doing year-over-year citywide rental price comparisons in all subsequent reports, including percentage of change. Harlem rental data is omitted from these particular comparisons in order not to skew results.
In June 2009, The Developers Group and The Real Estate Group NY formed an alliance and then in March 2011 became MNS.
Usage
The Manhattan Rental Market Report was created for renters, investors, developers and all individuals interested in the Manhattan residential rental market; according to the document, the data may be used as a benchmark with which to appropriately price an individual Manhattan property.
The report may be found in its most current form at http://www.mns.com/manhattan_rental_market_report. Archives are also available at http://www.mns.com/content/rental_market_reports/category/manhattan/.
Further reading
Daniel Baum & Co: About Daniel Baum - Creator
The Real Deal: Non-doorman units drive rental market down
Curbed: 2010 Would Say the Manhattan Rental Market Looks Good
CNBC: Foreign Companies Become NYC Landlords
Reuters: Manhattan Rentals Still Hot
The New York Observer: The Not-So-Eternal Footman
The New York Times: Home Prices Start to Dip, Recalling '90s Slump
The Wall Street Journal: Softening in Manhattan’s Rental Markets?
New York Magazine: This Just In: Manhattan Still Expensive!
SeekingAlpha.com: Housing Market Tracker - Housing Sales/Prices Review

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