By Kareem Johnson
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — Looking for an apartment? Expect to pay more when you find one, if you can find one.
A Citi Habitats brokerage firm report for the second quarter of 2011 shows that rents in Manhattan have increased 10.1 percent compared with the same quarter last year. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $2,672, up 9.2 percent over last year. A two-bedroom apartment is $3,757, up 10.8 percent. Citi Habitats stats include rent-controlled units.
Renters looking for a three-bedroom apartment will have to shell out more cash. The biggest rent increases were three-bedroom apartments, up 11.3 percent, to $4,985.
The SoHo and Tribeca neighborhoods showed the highest average rents in Manhattan, according to Citi Habitats, with studios going for $2,420 and $8,465 for a three-bedroom.
Low availability of units also helped to push rents up. Manhattan vacancies dropped to 0.72 percent in the second quarter. Citi Habitats says that's the lowest vacancy rate on record since they started tracking those rates in 2002.
"What you're seeing is intense demand with very little supply on the market," Gary Malin, president of Citi Habitats, told the Wall Street Journal.
Another factor in the rent increases are concessions, commonplace during the recession, have dried up. Many landlords are not offering those concessions, and in some cases creating bidding wars for units, the paper said.
Concessions, like a month's free rent or payment of brokerage fees have largely disappeared, with 11 percent of transactions in June including some type of concession, about half of what it was in 2010, the Citi Habitats report says.
In contrast, during the recession in 2009, 60 percent of all Manhattan rental transactions included a landlord concession.
A separate report from Prudential Douglas Elliman shows a slightly brighter picture than Citi Habitat, showing a 3.5 percent increase in the second quarter. Its data says the average New Yorker is paying $3,455 a month, the report said.
A Reis Inc. report released on Thursday says that New York led the nation on average in rents in the second quarter, Journal reported.
