Manhattan Residential Rental Market Continues to Firm in Q-2, Says PDE Report

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According to the latest Manhattan Rental Market Report by Prudential Douglas Elliman of New York, Q-2 showed signs of continued rental market stabilization.

This new residential rental report includes analysis by average rental price, median rental price, rental price per square foot, number of rentals, days on market, listing discount and listing inventory.  Rental markets are also subdivided by location, number of bedrooms, doorman, luxury and loft.  A quarterly format was selected over a monthly format due to the limited reliability of a smaller data set when analyzing submarket trends.

Here are key highlights of their Q-2 rental report:

• Listing discount and inventory dropped sharply as rental price indicators were mixed

• Rental price indicators stabilized as average size of rentals fell

The second quarter average rental price of a Manhattan apartment fell 3.3% to $3,710 per month from $3,839 in the same period last year. The decline was largely caused by the drop in the average size of a rental apartment to 898 square feet from 1,043 square feet over the same period. As a result, rental price per square foot increased 12.3% to $49.60 from $44.16 reflecting the higher price per square foot skew seen in smaller apartments.

• Listing inventory and listing discount fell as number of rental units increased

The discount between original rental list price and contract rental price fell to 1.8%, the lowest since the "Lehman tipping point" in 2008 as rental inventory fell sharply. There were 4,972 listings available for rent, 31.8% below the 7,290 units in the same period last year. The number of rentals more than doubled to 5,659 in the second quarter from 2,346 units in the same period last year with studios showing the largest year over year increase. Days on market fell to 53 days, 30 days faster than the prior year quarter.

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