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I am writing today’s Morning Meeting from Manhattan, where everybody -- from the cab drivers to the short order cook who made breakfast for me this morning -- is talking about one thing non-stop -- rent. The cook told me he lives in Pennsylvania and stays in a flop house in NYC because it is all he can afford. He gets home every other month.

For a lot of reasons, rent is a national conversation right now. Housing prices are static but interest rates are up, so as I have reported on Morning Meeting, potential buyers may be sitting in rentals for a while waiting to see what happens next.  In the meantime, rents are rising. 

As The (St Paul) Pioneer Press reports:

Apartment hunting? Don't expect as many deals as last year and be prepared for higher rent on that one- or two-bedroom now that the housing boom is over and apartments are back in demand.

"A couple of years ago it was typical for (landlords) to offer a month or even two months free for a lease," said Brent Wittenberg, a vice president of Minneapolis-based GVA Marquette Advisors. "Far fewer companies are offering those deals today."

That's because apartments have shifted from being in a renters' market to one in which landlords are on a better footing. "There are more people looking for apartments than a year ago," Wittenberg said.

The apartment vacancy rate has dropped to 4.8 percent in the seven-county metro area, according to the GVA Apartment Trends report for the second quarter, released Monday. That's down from 6 percent for the same period last year and puts the vacancy rate below the 5 percent rate real estate observers considered balanced.

So far, rents have gone up $12 from last year, to an average of $860. But they will continue rising. "We expect that to start happening in the months ahead, particularly in the urban markets and the close-in suburban communities," Wittenberg said.

So, here is some help from an Al’s Morning Meeting reader Jeremy Bencken, Co-founder & CEO ApartmentRatings.com, which has has some new tools. He writes:

I'm the co-founder of a website that helps renters research apartments via ratings and reviews from former tenants.  I'm writing to tell you about two news stories.

1. Today, we launched the first online moving calendar that integrates with Google Calendar to help movers organize the myriad details of moving (complete press release below).  According to the Census Bureau, the most popular month for moving is July. (Link)

2. It's not quite "Zillow for renters," but we've launched a service called "What the Neighbors Pay" that allows users to find out what renters in over 270 MSA's nationwide report paying in rent. ApartmentRatings.com has collected over 400,000 tenant responses nationwide over the past six years and made them available to search at the metro, city, and apartment community level. (Link) 

 
Pecking through several pages of the ratings, I do notice a surprising number of negative comments. It could be that people who have bad experiences are more motivated than those who get what they expect or have positive experiences. There also is no way, I suppose to fact check the experiences of renters, so I suppose readers will learn, over time, if the recommendations are useful.

One of the coolest ways to find a rental is HousingMaps.com, which uses Google Maps smashed up with craigslist. Just choose a city, choose a price range and the engine maps possibilities for you—in many cases you can see photos of the property.  

Here are tips the Chicago Tribune for finding an apartment during the summer search season.

One of the interesting market trends in some cities is that developers built huge condo projects, but when the housing market cooled, they have made the decision to turn the condos into rental apartments. Here is a story from The Washington Post. 

Inflating Sports Attendance Figures

I got this cool story idea from Dan Stockman at the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette:

One of our sports writers at The Journal Gazette this weekend had a great project on how area sports teams announce attendance figures that are far beyond the number of bodies actually in the building. Apparently, nearly every team in the nation does this. (See also this sidebar on the county-owned facilty where the games are held.)

 

New Radio with Pictures

While listening to NYC radio, I was impressed that 1010 WINS NewsRadio promoted Internet pictures of storm damage from Monday night’s storm. By the way, this has to be one of, if not THE best local radio news website in the country.

E-mail Losing Ground to IM

E-Mail is losing favor as the instant communication of choice. Now, instant messaging is making big inroads as many of us struggle respond to the mountains of emails that clog our inboxes. According to Framingham, Mass.-based research firm IDC, the worldwide market for enterprise IM applications is expected to grow from roughly 20 million total seat licenses in 2002 to more than 80 million in 2008.

To chat on instant messaging, you need to learn the lingo. Here is a place to start  --  NetLingo.com. It is a great resource for parents who need to get a clue about what their kids are writing to others. Here is another site.

Big Boat Business Just Fine

If you have to ask about the price of fuel, you can’t afford the cost of a big boat—and the rich folks just keep buying them bigger and bigger. Unit sales were down but total prices paid were up almost 5 percent last year.