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Luxury condos for rent
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo
FILE - In this March 29, 2011 photo, The Gehry New York, a new downtown residential building designed by Frank Gehry, is seen not far from ground zero in New York. The stainless-steel skyscraper in Manhattan--the tallest residential tower in the world--was originally supposed to include 200 sprawling condos along with 700 rentals. Now all of the critically-acclaimed building's apartments are for rent. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, file)
Associated Press
The Rental Class has never had it so good.
Due to a glut of glitzy condo towers and the need to appease skittish lenders some developers have found a new use for the gilded, clubby preserves once meant for buyers who could afford the seven- figure price tags. They’re renting them out and offering all of the perks normally reserved for the elite. The hand-watered grass roofs and outdoor movie theaters. The pet spas offering canine cardio and play dates for your puppy.
And developers have found that renters —reluctant to buy in a still-unsteady market— are embracing them. One marketing banner flapping against a ritzy, new rental building in New York says it best: “Repent. Rent. Repeat.”
Frank Gehry’s crumpled, stainless-steel skyscraper in Manhattan — the tallest residential tower in the world — was originally supposed to include 200 sprawling condos along with 700 rentals. Now all of the critically-acclaimed building’s apartments are for rent. The units, whose rents start at $2,630 for a 600-square-foot studio, are even rent-stabilized — meaning rents are regulated so tenants will only see small annual increases.
“People are liking the fact that they don’t have to commit to a mortgage and a large dollar amount to live here,” says MaryAnne Gilmartin, executive vice president of Forest City Ratner, the building’s developer.
In Chicago, a 547-square foot studio in the Jeanne Gang-designed Aqua, with its liquid, undulating glass skin and curving balconies, can be had for $1,571. In late April at Silicon Valley’s Three Sixty Residences, the sales office re-opened as a rental office. Since 2007, not one of the building’s sleek condos had made it out of escrow and into a final sale.
During the credit bubble, the 651 units in New York’s MiMA might have easily gone into bidding wars, as similar properties had. Instead, the developer put 500 of the apartments on the market as rentals. Since rentals in the Hell’s Kitchen building became available in March, 70 percent of the rentals have been leased.
One-third of U.S. home-owners now owe more on their homes than they are worth. Since the financial crash, nearly 3 million households have gone from owning to renting. Another 3 million are expected to do the same by 2015, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.