Earlier this week, former Howard Hughes CEO David Weinreb agreed to rent his West Chelsea penthouse for $177,500 a month, an eye-popping figure that followed a $95,000-a-month lease at a Naftali Group building on the Upper East Side in December. Data on trophy rentals is tough to pin down, but this is likely among the most expensive leases ever inked in New York City. The two hefty leases came as inventory for Manhattan's trophy rentals—which appraiser Jonathan Miller defines as the top 1 percent of the market, with rates starting at $25,000 a month—was down more than 40 percent year-over-year in January, as new leases climbed (albeit, at a more modest pace).
The street's ultra-luxury towers - from the first generation of supertalls west of Sixth Avenue that shaped the skyline, to mixed-use developments eastward 'driving the next phase of growth' - offer a dense concentration of cultural and lifestyle capital, paired with direct access to Central Park.
Nearly half of the apartments in the seven tallest towers in the area sit empty. At night the picture is even starker, with dozens of darkened floors turning the glittering status symbol into a vertical 'ghost neighborhood' scraping the sky.
