Yes, some Manhattan rents are down 7%, and one landlord I spoke to has dropped his Bed-Stuy rents 20%, but said his Bushwick rents are not falling. Combine the slightly lower prices with stricter landlords and even higher tenant competition than before, and it’s probably a wash. Two Metro correspondents looking for apartments are scared of East Williamsburg, its “questionable safety,” and its projects — so they abort and retreat to Staten Island and a complete dump on the Upper East Side. Don’t let the bridge hit you on the way out!
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Armstrong February 17th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Keep your chin up. I know a lot of people who are out in Bushwick not because they want to be, but because they HAVE to be. If you think they won’t take a Williamsburg or Manhattan apartment over Bushwick, u r “cray cray”
Of course rents are going down, and that’s because incomes are going down. Up next is the collapse of commercial real-estate. Not that I am a gloom and doomer. I’m actually excited to see what comes next for humanity, the US, NYC, and lil ol Bushwick itself.
Let’s not kid ourselves though, we’ve reached “Peak Rent” as far as Bushwick goes. How can rents rise when property values and income levels are dropping?
Andrew February 17th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Yes, rents are definitely down. Not so much in Bushwick though, which has really surprised me. I’ve got to believe they will go down here too somewhat, given the employment picture. However it seems to me that if the market wasn’t the way it was today, the gentrification effect would have pushed Bushwick rents way the hell up. Instead, they’re just not down, they’re flat (so far).
I did drop a couple of rents for higher-end three bedrooms in Bed Stuy recently by 20% just to see what would happen. Low and behold: massive interest, tons of applicants. And one of the existing tenants simply decided to stay on at the lower rent rather than move to Manhattan as she had originally planned. So there are still plenty of people looking for apartments in Brooklyn, and it turns out I probably dropped the rent a little too low in that case. I guess people still have to live somewhere!