The construction of thousands of rental apartments in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens are credited with driving down costs at the upper end of the New York City rental market.

Josh Barbanel reports on the state of the high-end rental market in New York City: "Finding tenants for upscale apartments has pitted individual investors against each other and even against developers. The pressure of competition is putting pressure on rent levels."
"Developers are offering as many as three months of free rent. Individual investors have trouble competing, even after cutting thousands of dollars from asking rents," adds Barbanel.
Barbanel provides plenty of information about the lengths brokers are going to in order to find tenants for luxury apartments, and there's ample evidence of a profound market shift, but only passing mention to the perceived cause of the change. Brokers and developers have been preparing since at least February for a glut in the marketplace, however, according to past articles, and no one in Barbanel's coverage expresses any surprise at the current state of the market.
[The Wall Street Journal might be behind a paywall for some readers.]
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