As tenants and landlords await to see what the rent hikes for rent-stabilized apartments will be, the NY Times looks at a new breed landlords: Private equity firms that buy buildings with rent-regulated apartments. The strategy seems to be for the firms to "recapture" the rent-regulated apartments by somehow increasing the vacancy rate from the more typical 5% to 20-30%. And tenants' advocates indicate equity firms do that by making tenants' lives hell to the......

The Real Estate Group of New York released its Manhattan Rental Market Report and writes that given the "continued softening" of the rental market and diminished demand, one- and two-bedroom rental prices have dropped, anywhere between 2-5%. However, studio rentals are up (driven by people trading down from bigger spaces to save money, oddly enough) and in the grand scheme of things, given the nutty NYC real estate market, rentals can still ridiculously expensive......