Tribeca is beautiful, but like so many beautiful things, you probably can't afford it.

Who wants to move in August?  No one even wants to be in the muggy cesspool of the city, let alone between two separate apartments. Indeed, August rental reports reflect the general malaise one is apt to feel when clutching a box damp with sweat at the bottom of a five floor walk-up. Or maybe Manhattan is now obeying the schedules of the Hamptons as the middle class flees?

Manhattan vacancy rates remained relatively flat in August. At 1.19 percent, they are basically unchanged from the 1.2 percent vacancy rate of July and slightly up from August 2011, when they were at just one percent, according to a report from Citi Habitats. Cause for celebration?

Not really. Citi Habitats notes that while this is the highest vacancy rate that August—typically a month of intense demand—has seen in the last three years, rents have always stayed remained unchanged (at their incredibly high levels) since last month. Although given the way that things have been going in the Manhattan rental market, no appreciable change from one month to the next is about the best we can hope for. A year of no increases would be an honest-to-god miracle.

The bad news is that Manhattan renters are flocking to cheaper units in non-doorman buildings. The biggest increase, month-over-month, occurred in non-doorman apartments, according to the MNS report, with Greenwich Village studios spiking 7.4 percent from last month and Midtown East one-bedrooms shooting up 6.7 percent. Renters also rushed to the Upper East Side and the Lower East Side, two of the last islands of comparatively reasonable rents, reducing the apartment availability in both neighborhoods.

You can't win! You try to save money and just end up spending more. But whatever you do, stay away from Tribeca, which saw the biggest monthly increase, according to MNS. Non-doorman studio apartments went up $285 from July and now cost an average of $4,133 a month. For a studio!

kvelsey@observer.com

Not cheap, but it could be cheaper. (Flodigrip's world, flickr)

While living in some rundown old industrial building in Williamsburg has a certain appeal, you might be better off renting in Soho if you want to save money, The Wall Street Journal reports.

An influx of new residents moving to the borough (and landlords eager to take advantage of them) has resulted in rapidly rising rents, such that the cost of a studio in Williamsburg or Park Slope is higher than it is in some of Manhattan's more desirable neighborhoods. With prices for studios raising 10.4 percent in Brooklyn to Manhattan's 8 percent, renters looking for a Williamsburg studio can expect to pay $2,700. Greenwich Village studios average a more palatable $2,500.

"I lived [in Williamsburg] for the postindustrial charm or the affordability and neither of those really exist anymore," advertising executive Philip Bjerknes told The Journal. "I love Brooklyn. It's adorable, with great places to eat, but they also have that in Manhattan."

Mr. Bjerknes moved to Alphabet City to save money—the neighborhood where all the starving artists used to live before they moved to Williamsburg to save money.

Other ex-Brooklynites have ventured even further afield, landing on the Upper East Side, the most happening neighborhood that isn't actually happening.

One new resident, who relocated in part because she could live in the brownstone apartment that she'd always wanted but could never afford in Park Slope, admitted that her new neighborhood was surprisingly kind of awesome.

Her neighborhood, she told The Journal "has the charm that you would want in Brooklyn that is quickly disappearing."

Of course, rising Brooklyn rents don't mean that Manhattan—where rents are hitting record highs never to recede—is affordable. Just that many areas of Brooklyn aren't affordable either. For the rest of us, it's time to look at Queens.

kvelsey@observer.com

Cover your eyes! (WalkerSister, flickr)

Watching the Manhattan rental market is like watching Saw. It's fascinating and terrible and nauseating all at the same time.

Well, get ready torture porn fans, because the second quarter market rental reports are here. Our protagonist has just stepped into a car with a stranger to find that the inside door handle has been removed from the passenger side. Let the carnage begin!

Rents are at their highest level in two years, with the median rental price shooting up 7.9 percent from the same quarter last year, according to the Prudential Douglas Elliman report prepared by Jonathan Miller. Brace yourselves: we're now at $3,125, up from $2,895 in the second quarter of 2011.

The situation is dire, yes, but not hopeless, reports Citi Habitats. Compared to the previous quarter, rents have remained relatively stable, Citi Habitats tells us, albeit at record high levels. And there's more good news (our protagonist has sent a text message to an attentive friend, who has every intention of calling the police!). The overall vacancy rate has actually gone up compared to the same quarter last year, from 0.72 percent in 2011 to 0.97 percent in 2012. Douglas Elliman reports that listing inventory rose 27.9 percent, from 4,427 available last year to 5,660 units this year.

The vacancy rate could indicate that tenants are postponing their search until after the summer "busy season," Citi Habitats notes, or "perhaps they have reached their 'pain threshold' and are looking at opportunities in the outer boroughs or in the city's sales market." The outer boroughs? Now you're really scaring us.

But what about concessions?, you may ask. You shouldn't have asked. Because when it comes to concessions, there is truly no mercy. Only 3.7 percent of rentals gave concessions (and the concessions were mostly in new buildings and they were mostly one month's free rent).

Finding a reasonably priced apartment in Manhattan may be more difficult than escaping from a killer's house of horrors, but look to the Upper East Side, recommends Douglas Elliman. Rental rates on studios there dropped an average of $40 in June. Just stay away from Chelsea, which promises certain doom: the price went up an average of $71 in June, with non-doorman two-bedrooms in the neighborhood going up $105 a month. Which is so terrifying that we need to stop writing. We can't watch any more of this.

kvelsey@observer.com

First, came a report at the end of August that vacancy rates had dropped slightly and rents were up. Landlords smiled.

Then, just a couple of weeks later we wrote about a report from Citi Habitats showing that Manhattan vacancies rates had actually climbed, up to 1.1 percent from 0.8 percent. Landlords had cut back on incentives, which caused a decline in new tenants, the report said. Tenants smiled slyly.

At the time, we predicted they would be just a little concerned, since let's face it, that still makes an apartment in the city a pretty tough find. Gary Malin, Citi Habitats' president, told us the vacancy rate would have to shoot above 2 percent to really freak them out.

But others disagreed. Crain's reported the "return of rental freebies!" Prompted by concern over the new report, landlords were desperate to lure back new tenants. Except the article doesn't actually quote a single landlord who plans on offering new incentives, and all of the stats point to the idea that landlords are cutting back.

Now, The New York Times says "landlords are back in control"! The Times gabs with Mr. Malin about the report, and he says "landlords are back in the driver's seat." They “did what they needed to do last year, but they’re not giving money away this year, and threatening to leave doesn’t threaten owners as much as it did a year ago.”

One serious possibility is that no one has any idea what's going on, and helpless reporters just print whatever the talking heads say without pausing to reflect whether any of it makes any sense.

Another, is that there may be an odd logic to what's happening. In 2008, during the deepest doldrums for the residential sales market, rental prices in New York actually climbed 9 percent. That was likely caused by people abandoning plans to buy a place, and reconsidering renting one, economists said at the time. There is, therefore, some reason to expect the market could soften a bit if more people begin to reconsider buying.

A final possibility, as stock market analysts sometimes note, is that equivocal news is better than bad news. If renters and landlords aren't acting as a herd, but instead making individual decisions, its means that people are starting to contemplate their options rather than just panicking. And that, we can all agree, is a good thing.

lkusisto@observer.com

The Real Estate Group of New York's latest Manhattan Rental Market Report went live on Tuesday morning, and it shows rents in July ticking up. That's reassuring for landlords and worrisome for first-time renters. Your friends who entered the market last year may still be riding on the recession-era glut of incentives, such as a couple months of free rent, but chances are you won't be so lucky.

"As a rule, if you're living in Manhattan, it's not impossible, but it's very hard to find anything under $1,300 or $1,400," said Gus Waite, vice president of the rental division of The Real Estate Group New York, a local brokerage.

Asked whether it was possible to rent for a thousand dollars a month (or less!), Mr. Waite wasn't optimistic. "I wouldn't say there's no way. It's a tall order. People always say, 'My friend...' But your friend wasn't renting in July 2010."

Rents aren't actually that much higher than last year. Average rents are up 0.72 percent from June and up 3.62 percent from the same period last year. The average rent for a non-doorman studio is $2,077, while a doorman studio is $2,367 (last year: $1,958 and $2,337, respectively). A non-doorman one-bedroom is $2,713, while a doorman one-bedroom is $3,428 (last year: $2,590 and $3,276, respectively). It's cheaper to have a roommate, but not by much. A non-doorman two-bedroom is $3,680, while a doorman two-bedroom is $5,327 (last year: $3,590 and $5,197, respectively).

Still, many of the symptoms of last year's renter's market have vanished. As Mr. Waite said, "The market is almost back to normal," which means incentives are rarer. Don't expect, for instance, to be offered two months of free rent, a common practice in 2009. Also, don't expect to be allowed to put up a temporary wall. The service, which can save renters a bundle, is starting to be more closely scrutinized for legality. Now that landlords aren't so desperate, they're getting stricter about checking for permits.

"The laws haven't changed in 80 years. It's the interpretation of the codes," Mr. Waite said. "You have to get a permit. For years people didn't get permits because people were doing so many. But now, if they check, you could get fined or in trouble."

Because of the dearth of incentives, the buildings still offering them are getting special attention. The Financial District and Stuyvesant Town, where free rent deals still exist, are starting to look more attractive.

Mr. Waite said he doesn't expect rents to go down. But he also doesn't expect them to go up. He predicts they'll remain fairly constant for the rest of the summer. Which means you have a few more leisurely weeks to pick out a place before school starts—or doesn't—in the fall.

walden@observer.com

“What should you be paying for your place?” asked the event’s promotional materials, promising a discussion of “the fast-changing New York City rentals market, with an eye on new buildings, hot neighborhoods, how to find deals and strategies for coping and staying sane during the apartment search.”

But the evening’s primary piece of advice to curious tenants: Don’t rent, buy!

Curbed founder Lockhart Steele, moderating a conversation with appraisal guru Jonathan Miller and Prudential Douglas Elliman CEO Dottie Herman, opened by saying that they would be taking the evening in a somewhat different direction than originally promised. Using Mr. Miller’s Thursday “Three Cents Worth” Curbed post as a jumping-off point, they would consider the intertwined relationship between rentals and sales—a process facilitated by Mr. Miller’s rental reports, which debuted in July as the latest in the stable of formidable market analyses he does on Elliman’s behalf.

Mr. Miller said that he hoped to bring transparency to rentals, and to make rental/sales comparisons a matter of “apples to apples.”

But after some general reflections on the state of the market—first-time buyers have incentives; leases of small apartments lag—the panel seemed to serve only a glancing analysis of the New York apartment renter’s lot in life. They discussed instead the woes of developers, the challenges of the foreclosure market, and the timing of a potential rebound. “We’re in the sixth or seventh inning of the game,” Mr. Miller said.

So—what to do? Ms. Herman said that even with falling rents, she advised people staying in the city more than a year or two to buy. Leave a standing offer if your bid is accepted; buy cheap in an area priced high—surrounding properties will pull your value up. “Rentals are just throwing your money out there,” she said.

During the closing Q&A with the audience, a self-described “potential first-time buyer” asked whether emerging markets like East Williamsburg and Bushwick were worthwhile. Mr. Miller said that they were more volatile. The first-time buyer pressed: What if you could only afford to buy in an emerging market? Would it be better just to rent in Manhattan?

“I would buy,” Ms. Herman said. “Get in the game.”

She later recalled her father advising her to buy real estate instead of traveling to Europe.

Ms. Herman wore a white suit printed with roses, a pink scrunchie on her wrist, and a gold “D” necklace. Jonathan Miller, in business casual, was a jovial, avuncular presence; and Lockhart Steele, looking like a Google programmer in a button-down shirt, was  far less menacing than his badass, super-villain name would suggest.

Mr. Steele said that he hoped to host similar events in the future, and solicited audience members’ advice. After all, a panel like this represented a real-world version of blogosphere dialogue for Curbed’s devoted and interactive readership. He said that they had presold 50 tickets, but admitted that the recent Eater panel with Top Chefs was probably a bigger draw.

But what of the renters who can’t hope to buy? Was there anything to offer them?

“Find someplace fun,” Ms. Herman said after the panel. And then, she said, consider buying with friends.

mfischer@observer.com

To understand just how far rents have—and have not—fallen throughout Manhattan since the boom busted, we plucked four neighborhoods emblematic of the headier days and charted their average rents on different-sized apartments from the peak of the boom in September 2007 to what's likely the trough (or close to it) in March 2009. The statistics come from the Real Estate Group New York (PDF of the new March report here).

The four neighborhoods are The Financial District, which was once the next hot neighborhood as, like Harlem, it could be a refuge for renters who wanted to stay in Manhattan and maybe didn't have the cash to pay the record rents elsewhere; Greenwich Village, where everyone wants to rent always; and the Central Park–seperated Upper East Side and Upper West Side, where everyone ends up renting.

Of these four, the Financial District is the only one to have experienced a decline in rents for studios, one-bedrooms and two-bedrooms in both doorman and non-doorman buildings. Leading the FiDi retreat is the doorman studio market, where rents have fallen 18.2 percent in the 18 months since September 2007.

Upper East Side rents on doorman studios and one-bedroom apartments have dropped 9.1 and 7.8 percent, respectively, while rents on non-doorman studios, one-bedrooms and two-bedrooms have tanked 10.1 percent, 15.1 percent, and 15.5 percent, respectively.

Peruse our interactive map for more rental stats.

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Here are the grim rent numbers for landlords.

• Doorman studios: $2,415 in December; $2,383 in January
• Non-doorman studios: $1,996 in Decembers; $1,931 in January
• Doorman one-bedroom: $3,456 in December; $3,453 in January
• Non-doorman one-bedroom: $2,654 in December; $2,612 in January
• Doorman two-bedroom: $5,343 in December; $5,187 in January
• Non-doorman two-bedroom: $3,701 in December; $3,659 in January

Shortly before Christmas, some real executives spoke to The Observer about the January pick-up, when renters (and buyers) traditionally get back in the game after taking the holidays off. Most analysts, like REGNY’s COO Daniel Baum, quite presciently anticipated the malaise to continue into 2009, however. “I can’t see a large amount of demand coming in January that will create a surge in the first quarter,” Mr. Baum had said.

Across the board, rents are at their 12-month lows.

Now, if they could only rent out One Hanson's retail as well...