As of this morning, it said: “PRESIDENT OMABA LIVED HERE AND YOU CAN TOO” President Omaba? I guess it’s better than when Fox News called him Osama, but it doesn’t give me a lot of faith in the brokers. The rest of the ad is also riddled with grammatical errors, which we tend to think is a direct slap in the face to a president who has made education reform an important part of his agenda.

That said, the place has hardwood floors, exposed brick, and a marble bathroom, which means you can probably overlook the spelling errors. And the neighborhood is a lot less scary than when Obama moved in, at least as he describes it in his memoir, “Dreams from My Father”. In fact, Obama said he left the 109th Street apartment “for lack of heat.” Hopefully, they’ve gotten that problem solved in the 30 years since he lived there.

Apartments at 302 Columbus Avenue, the old J.M. Horton Ice Cream Company building.

Throughout the city, rents have been rising gradually, and fewer apartments are sitting empty. But the Upper West Side rental market is a mixed picture, according to a rental market report released today by The Real Estate Group of New York (TREGNY).

In fact, two bedrooms in buildings without doormen continue to fall in price, and are now at their lowest level since TREGNY started tracking rents in 2007. The average non-doorman two-bedroom in the neighborhood rented for $2,896 in May. A year ago the average rent was $3,367.

Prices for other classes of apartments were mixed. Non-doorman studios (+2.97%), non-doorman one-bedrooms (+0.44%), and doorman two-bedrooms (+2.88%) all rose; Doorman studios (-1.65%), doorman one-bedrooms (-1.01%), and non-doorman two-bedrooms (-0.36%) all fell. Check out the full report here.

Average Prices
Doorman buildings
Studio: $2,094
One bedroom: $3,228
Two bedroom: $5,445

Non-doorman buildings
Studio: $1,732
One bedroom: $2,290
Two bedroom: $2,896

(photo by michaelnyc via flickr)

The new rental market report from The Real Estate Group of New York showed a 1.1% increase in rental rates on average throughout Manhattan. On the Upper West Side, rents increased the most for studios in buildings without doormen. They were up 2.2%, to an average $1,682.

All that said, rents could go down again. Manhattan’s vacancy rate increased by 1.2% in April, leaving some slack in the market.

TREGNY advises renters to find a roommate and start looking for deals in two-bedrooms, which have fallen the most in price in recent months throughout the city. Buddy up, Upper West Siders!

Of course, if money isn’t an object you could also live here, an elevator-ride away from the new Trader Joe’s.

(image of 275 West 96th Street via TREGNY. The one-bedroom in 6L is asking 2,700 a month. And here are the rest of TREGNY’s listings for the neighborhood.)

For the first time in at least six months, rents for all classes of apartments on the Upper West Side (studios to two bedrooms in both doorman and non-doorman buildings) rose, according to The Real Estate Group of New York’s (TREGNY) March rental report. In many cases, the rise was very small — just 0.02% for studios in buildings with doormen — but TREGNY notes that rents appear to be moving back up throughout the city. Rents citywide now lag last year’s numbers by just 1.52%, versus a 3% gap last month. Nonetheless, vacancies throughout the city saw a slight uptick.

The largest price increase on the Upper West Side was for two bedrooms in doorman buildings, which got 3.3% more expensive.

Check out the whole report here. And see what we had to say about the buyer’s maket here. (Photo by Jamie of From Me to You.)

A two-bedroom on the Upper West Side rented for $2,974 on average, down 4.8% from last month, and two bedrooms with doormen rented for $5,115, down 3.1%, according to The Real Estate Group of New York (TREGNY), which just put out a report about January rents. Rents for two-bedrooms are lower than they have been in at least a year. The decreases stand out in contrast to the overall New York City market, where rents fell less than a percentage point.

Rents for other apartment categories on the Upper West Side also fell, most notably for one-bedrooms in buildings with doormen, which dropped 3.1%, though prices for studios and one-bedrooms without doormen were up slightly. Check out the full report here. (photo by 1hr photo via flickr)

One other trend the report found: inventories of non-doorman apartments throughout Manhattan jumped about 6% this month, which could lead to cheaper rents in the future. If you’re in the market for a non-doorman rental, you might get a better deal or be able to swing more incentives because landlords are looking to fill their inventory.

The report does not take into account incentives offered to renters to sign a lease. Those incentives have been notable on the Upper West Side in recent months — the new Columbus Square developments, for instance, have been offering three months free rent — though TREGNY says that incentives are starting to go away. In fact, the group seems to think things are looking up for landlords despite a brutal 2009.

“Many of the aggressive incentives that were previously being offered this year have been scaled back and landlords seem to be increasingly comfortable with their situations,” the report states. “Though the outlook for 2010 is still uncertain, the data does offer some hope for improvement.” (Photo by Avi)

For some categories, including studios and one-bedrooms with a doorman, Upper West Side apartments stayed flat or rose slightly. But prices for one-bedrooms without a doorman, and all two bedrooms fell. Two-bedrooms without a doorman saw the largest decline — nearly 5% from last month, and 10% from last September. As we noted yesterday, some owners of rental buildings are giving bigger and bigger incentives to fill apartments. (photo by eviltomthai via flickr)

Manhattan Rental Market Report (TREGNY)

Correction: An initial version of this article said the report was put out by JAD Realty.