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I agree. Also, include pictures in your ad. It makes it easier for people. I know that when I was first looking I only paid attention to postings that included pictures. I thought that if a listing didn't include a picture it meant that the apartment was ugly or small or what have you.

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I agree with Dev.B your price is very high for JSQ unless it is super exceptional in some way. I recently lived (and still know the people living) in a HUGE very nice 3BR less than a block from Grove St, rent is $2050/mo total. For those asking where: morgan st lofts. Given it is one of the best deals i have seen yet...which is why I lived there for years.

So if you need marketing advice, put front and center in your ad what differentiates your unit justifying the price. If nothing is there, re-evaluate the application of your academic "economic" theory.

Please show me this elusive 3 bedroom for under 2k. I'm not a realtor but even I know that that is a little wishfull thinking.
2k for a 2 bedroom sounds about right if it's maintained. I've seen 2 bedrooms for less but they are disgusting and I don't count that tiny room in the front of a brownstone a bedroom.

I think $2,000 a month is overpaying for a two bedroom around grove street. I know a lot of people renting 2bdrms for far less; for that money you can probably get a 3 bedroom.

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Actually in this market a lot of the fees are paid by the owner, when listing by a realtor. I know of a really good real estate agent that specializes in rentals. She has rented units for me before.

Hazel Zoleta
Liberty Realty Jersey City
Realtor / Associate
201-332-3999 ext. 202
201-223-4611Fax
917-301-1883Mobile
hzoleta@libertyrealestate.com
http://www.clickahome.net
View Listings

I would also try sublet.com, craigslist.com, rentometer.com, backpage.com, nj.com, rent.com.

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Oh so when people ask How to get rid of a mouse or What is worse luxury condos or hipsters that is appropriate dialogue? But when I ask advice about renting an apartment in JC my question qualifies as the homework hotline? Who crowned you the king of the message board? Why are you so judgmental?

Actually the term internerd was coined by the Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG Award winner Tina Fey. Not my two year old, you wise guy.

BTW?my original request was not for a pricing strategy, it was for a marketing strategy. I have had a few graduate and undergraduate Economics classes and I do understand the fundamentals of supply and demand economics. I figured out the pricing thing myself, thank you very much.

Again thanks to everyone who actually contributed with out giving a dose of acerbic commentary.

if anyone is renting or knows of a 2br apt for rent downtown around $2K within walking distance of either the grove or pavonia path please PM me. my girlfriend is looking to move into a new place by jan 1st.

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keep drinking that permabull kool-aid. About half year back when i said there is no reason to buy real estate as the market will be down and flat at best and one is better off renting for now, you were on the soapbox flipping me off and telling everyone to buy real estate as it is the "bestest" investment ever and how one is an idiot to pay rent instead of paying mortgage etc etc..

Then a few months back, it's real estate market will always come back. After that - ok maybe luxury rentals are affected but not the $1000 rentals! And now it's well if landlords are screwed, so are the tenants so we are all screwed!

Do yourself a favor, and just stop digging.

The reality is, wallstreet/financial took the brunt of this meltdown. Most of the major layoffs didnt happen until 2nd quarter of this year and with very little bonus coming in at year end. It takes time for this effect to spread/snowball to other businesses and real estate in the city. On top of that, a huge demand pool of foreign real estate investors have all vanished as they deal with their own countries crisis.

If this is nevada, ca or florida, i may start peeking around for some bargains, but nyc/jc we are just starting to feel the impact.

Rents are falling, bottom line. Renters are holding out for better properties or better locations. Marginal neighborhoods are going to be the most effected. Good tenants can probably even negotiate better renewal terms on existing properties.

If tenants are waiting for the bottom to fall out they are going to be in for a shock when landlords start walking away from buildings and they wonder why there is no heat or running water. This has happened before in the 70's and 80's. A recession sucks for everyone.

I've read that the NYC rental market is hurting somewhat.

Here is an interesting article from last week's Daily News:

Rents and home prices in some Brooklyn neighborhoods have outpaced those in Manhattan

BY CATEY HILL
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, November 26th 2008

Priced out of Brooklyn? You might want to try Manhattan.

Many neighborhoods in Brooklyn are now more expensive to live in than Manhattan neighborhoods (and I'm talking below 90th Street here), according to data compiled by StreetEasy.com for October 2008.

The median rental prices in DUMBO, Park Slope and Fort Greene were higher than those in the East Village, Lower East Side, Upper East Side, Midtown East and Murray Hill. The median sales prices in Brooklyn's Fulton Ferry and DUMBO neighborhoods were higher than those in Midtown East, the East Village, Murray Hill and the Lower East Side, the report showed.

"There are definitely situations where you can get better deals in Manhattan than in Brooklyn. Brooklyn Heights and Williamsburg can be especially pricey," said Adjina Dekidjiev, the Rental Operations Manager for Manhattan Apartments, Inc.

Are we talking about comparable apartments here? In many cases, yes.

Data from StreetEasy.com shows that the median rental listing price for a one-bedroom in Brooklyn Heights is $2,180. In the Upper East Side, it's only $1,950 and on the Lower East Side, it's $2,085. For two-bedroom rentals, a Brooklyn Heights apartment will run you about $4,400 while one in the Upper West Side will run $4,200 and on the Lower East Side $2,887.

Qiana Spellman, a Licensed Real Estate Specialist with the Real Estate Group, said she has seen quite a few comparable properties where the Manhattan property was priced lower. For example, she found a newly renovated, two-bedroom apartment in a doorman building on the Upper West Side that was less expensive than a similar-sized two-bedroom in Park Slope in an older brownstone.

The days of Brooklyn taking a back seat to Manhattan may officially be over. Brooklyn's hot now, and your pricey rent just proves it.

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My point was that this is a community forum, not the Homework Hotline.

Want some real advice?

THE RENT IS TOO HIGH. I pay less than that for a large 2 bedroom downtown. Nobody is calling because people are wising up to the fact that JSQ is still kind of a dump and will be for the foreseeable future.

I hope this helps, since you're soooooo busy :*(

PS - "internerd?" Let me guess...

You: Hmm.. what should I call this mean guy on this site?
Two year old: *drools* INTOONERRRD
You: YES!

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Both my husband and I work full time demanding jobs; we are raising a 2 year old boy and managing 5 properties with a total of 14 units. If the fact that I am not an internerd and can monitor and contribute to blogs and forums regularly makes me a parasite then so be it. Thanks for the insult you internerd. BTW...how do I find Yahoo answers?

Seriously thanks to all of the people that offered real advice.

TNGAL-
List the apartment with college campus housing offices. St Peters College, NYU, NJCU, Stevens, etc.
This is the perfect time of year for college kids who are tired with the dorm life to look for an apt for the next semester. You can have their parents be co-signers on the lease.

my partner and I are shopping for a new place. dropping your rent by $101 can make a difference. we are in control because of the market glut. this why it is referred to as "real estate MARKET". with good credit and money I see all reason for us to hold out and shop for the better price. who in their right mind would pay more if you were able to wait for the bottom to fall out.

What's with all these people that only bother to stop by JCLIST and register when they have a problem? Go to yahoo answers if you want to be a parasite.

This time of year is always slow for rentals. Holidays etc.

I am in the same situation as a previous poster.

I'm a little startled that for the first time in a long time I've gotten almost no responses to a craigslist ad for a large apartment in the Journal Square Island Section that has originally $1400 that has been reduced to $1299. Last year they were calling as soon as the ad was up!

I must also say, Craigs is doing a crappy job of reigning in the spamming realtors. There's one crew, Prudential Sussex Realty, reposting the same set of ads every day.

Does anyone have any creative suggestions as to what we can do to get it rented? We post on Craigslist and Sublet.com and JClist.com and have it listed with a realtor. Please help!

This seems related:

======================
Office Tenants Flee Manhattan Rents for Brooklyn

New York Times
By J. ALEX TARQUINIO
November 4, 2008

Among office tenants, bargain hunting is back in style. After years of paying skyrocketing rents in Manhattan, some companies have decided to cross the East River.

The New York Supreme Court in Brooklyn is in the 30-story building at 12 MetroTech Center, completed in 2005.

?Our lease is up next year, and when we looked around the city, it was difficult to find the kind of space we wanted at a reasonable price,? said Byron E. Lewis, the chairman and chief executive of UniWorld Group, a New York advertising agency that focuses on African-American consumers.

UniWorld moved in 1989 to its current headquarters in SoHo, an old printing loft at 100 Avenue of the Americas, between Watts and Grand Streets. At that time, office rents were much cheaper there than in Midtown Manhattan. But the company?s lease expires in August, and Mr. Lewis said that SoHo had become too expensive.

So he decided to move the agency?s headquarters ? including all 130 employees ? to 1 MetroTech, in Downtown Brooklyn. UniWorld has rented the entire 11th floor in a 23-story building. Its lease, signed in September, is for around 37,000 square feet, roughly the same size as the office it now has. The company will move next summer.

Although vacancy rates are rising in Manhattan, mostly because of layoffs in the financial industry, office space is actually becoming more scarce in Downtown Brooklyn. The vacancy rate there in modern, well-equipped buildings ? what brokers refer to as Class A office space ? fell to 7.9 percent in the third quarter, from 9.4 percent in the first quarter, according to Cushman & Wakefield, the commercial real estate concern.

At least nine Manhattan companies, including UniWorld, have signed new leases for Class A space in Downtown Brooklyn this year. The leases ? for properties ranging in size from 4,000 square feet to 120,000 square feet ? total nearly 300,000 square feet.

Although that would not make much of a dent in Midtown Manhattan, the Downtown Brooklyn market is relatively small. It has only about eight million square feet of Class A space, compared to nearly 180 million square feet in Midtown.

Most of the Class A space is in MetroTech, a large office complex in Downtown Brooklyn that was built by Forest City Ratner from the early 1990s through 2005. The developer owns six office buildings, with 3.7 million square feet, in MetroTech?s 5.2 million square feet.

JPMorgan Chase owns the other two office buildings in MetroTech. Forest City Ratner also owns three more Class A buildings near MetroTech, including a 19-story 700,000-square-foot tower called 1 Pierrepont Plaza.

?When MetroTech was first created in the early 1990s, it was primarily for back-office employees at large financial institutions,? said Glenn Markman, an executive director at Cushman & Wakefield. ?But it has become much more diverse, with law firms, nonprofits, media and advertising all moving there.?

By far the largest deal this year was struck by American International Group, the troubled insurer. It signed a lease in March for 120,000 square feet in 12 MetroTech, a 30-story building that was completed in 2005.

The new space had been fully occupied by some workers in the company?s accounting and legal departments, said Joe Norton, an A.I.G. spokesman. He said the 10-year lease at MetroTech carries an annual rent of $33.50 a square foot for the first five years, and $37.50 for the second five years, which is considerably less than rents in Manhattan.

The average asking annual rent for all Class A office space in Downtown Brooklyn was $30.52 a square foot in the third quarter, down from the historic high of $31.44 in the first quarter, according to Cushman & Wakefield. That is only a third of the average asking rent in Midtown Manhattan, which was $92.59 a square foot in the third quarter.

In some of the most desirable Manhattan towers, rents can be stunningly high. For example, asking rents at the General Motors Building, on Fifth Avenue between 58th and 59th Streets, are about $150 a square foot. Weil Gotshal & Manges, a global corporate law firm that is known for its bankruptcy practice, was the building?s first tenant 40 years ago.

Weil recently decided to give up 25,000 square feet of its space there and signed a lease through 2020 for the entire ninth floor ? around 35,000 square feet ? of 15 MetroTech, a 19-story building that opened in 2003. It plans to move about 100 employees from its accounting, human resources and technology departments there.

Some smaller companies have decided to move all of their employees to Brooklyn. For example, El Diario, a Spanish-language newspaper, took more than 23,000 square feet at 1 MetroTech. The Ms. Foundation for Women, a nonprofit organization for women?s causes, signed a lease for 15,000 square feet at 12 MetroTech, while Heartshare, a nonprofit organization focused on children, has taken almost 33,000 square feet at 12 MetroTech.

Cost savings can go well beyond the rent. The city provides tax incentives to lure businesses from Manhattan to the other boroughs instead of moving to New Jersey or Westchester County. The Relocation and Employment Assistance Program gives companies a $3,000 tax credit for each employee against city business taxes every year in the first 12 years after the move. That would cut costs at a rate equivalent to $16 a square foot, assuming average density.

Keith Caggiano, a senior vice president at CB Richard Ellis, the broker that represents Forest City Ratner, says there are other potential savings as well. For example, he said, there is no commercial rent tax in Brooklyn, compared with a 3.9 percent tax in Manhattan, which kicks in when a company?s rent exceeds $250,000 a year.

?Downtown Brooklyn is also becoming more of a vibrant residential community, which I think bodes well for its future as an office market,? Mr. Caggiano said.

Plans are in the works that would profoundly change the scale of the office market near Downtown Brooklyn. The most drastic is the long-delayed $4 billion Atlantic Yards project, designed by Frank Gehry, where Forest City Ratner plans to build a basketball arena and up to 16 towers with apartments and offices. The site for that project is within walking distance of Downtown Brooklyn.

MaryAnne Gilmartin, executive vice president for commercial and residential development at Forest City Ratner, said the project would add up to one million square feet of office space, including a 600,000-square-foot tower. In addition, the company says it has the capacity to add almost one million square feet of office space in the MetroTech development.

?If we build one, that doesn?t mean we wouldn?t build the other,? Ms. Gilmartin said.

But Ms. Gilmartin said Forest City Ratner would not build any new office space in Brooklyn until it had adequate advance leasing. She said that before the credit markets froze up this fall, the banks could finance buildings with 50 percent advance leasing. Although it is too soon to say what might happen once the credit markets thaw, she speculated that bankers might want greater advance leasing, perhaps as much as 60 to 75 percent.

So the office market in Downtown Brooklyn might remain tight for some time. There is some sublease space on the market; and JPMorgan Chase is looking to rent out a large block of space in its buildings in MetroTech. But Ms. Gilmartin said that 99 percent of Forest City Ratner?s space in MetroTech is leased. ?We are sitting pretty now,? she said.

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I would have sooner stayed in the apartment myself than paid a realtor fee.
A prospective tenant walks into a realtor's office and wants to see whatever the realtor has to show them in their price range. The realtor is working for the tenant.

If rentals are slowing its because tenants are sitting tight rather than entering new long term leasesor moving out of the area entirely.

The recent job cuts might have an impact but how many jobs in JC were really lost. Also this would have more of an effect on the higher end units.

I would think with less people buying and more concern over the bottom line, these tenants would be jumping all over the lower priced, less luxurious units.

I have a couple of lower end vacanies of my own but have been getting some calls. I've been asking and it seems that my places are priced right to the market.

I've had this problem even in good markets.

I also have a tenant in a high end unit that has been trying to get a loan for months to buy a condo. They were supposed to move out 2 months ago.

At the end of the day people need a place to live unless we go into an all out depression I think we will be ok.

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Maybe I'm misremembering. The flier I saw was in the window of the real estate agency right by the McDonald's.

I have found that owners that list there apartment with realtors are often priced better than for rent by owner. Owners often have an inflated view of how much there apt/ home is worth. If one is pressed for time paying a fee may be cost effective. When I first moved to Hudson County( many moons ago) my roomate and I paid a 1 month fee for a great 2 bedroom we lived in over 3 years. We found it was well worth the approx $20 a month prorated fee.

there are lazy realtors, dishonest brokers ect ect but i have found that it's indicitive of the human race not a particular line of work.

if people spent less time posting and complaining and put a little effort into cleaning and updating there apts I'm sure that they would rent sooner.

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I lived there for 2 years. It is an excellent barometer because their rental performance is a direct indication of the downtown jersey city market due to its location and the way they are advertised. All this stuff about mice/roach etc.. is irrelevant, i dont know why you guys even bring those up, ok it's a crappy place and you dont want to live there, so what? what does it have anything to do with what we are discussing.

In previous years, there were absoutely no vacancies in any of the downtown highrise rentals, i went to all of them. Metropolis tower was renting out units the same day they became vacant. But the way their rental worked is you cannot reserve something weeks earlier, so they only start rent when the guy moves out which give everyone a fair shot at first come first serve. I was very desparate as just sold my condo and closing was in 1 week. Had to go back to there like 4 times just to time it perfectly for a vacant studio/1br. When the lady finally told me one just opened, it was like winning the lottery. The rent for a studio was $1450, and 1br was $1650.

Now goto their office at 280 marin again, they have a whole list of rentals listed, studio was also reduced to $1250

My feeling with rental Realtor fees is that these people are working for the landlord, not the prospective tenant, so the landlord should be paying these fees. However, I believe that as a Realtor they are obligated to present their client with all offers, so you could offer to lease the apartment provided the landlord pays the fee, and in this market, its probably very realistic to get that.

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It appears that both rental and sales realtors have gotten used to just getting the listing being 95% of their job.

Not only are the realtors lazy as you say, but I would never relinquish the job of showing the apartment, the best time to get a feel for who the prospective tenant is. Otherwise if you want to meet them, it's like a more formal "interview". The best time to avoid a bad landlord-tenant relationship is before the lease.

I'm with you on the Realtor Fee, Suze. When we decided to move to JC, we passed on a number of great apartments because of the realtor fees. I would have much less of a problem splitting the fee with the landlord, but to pay an extra months rent, for a realtor to do not that much work is absurd.

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The whole realtor fee really irks me.

When I was looking for my current place, I found it on Craigslist, called the number, the realtor met me at the apartment, opened the door, and that was it. There was no pre-interview or weeding out or anything of that nature.

I paid a month's rent to have someone unlock the door so I could see an apartment. It's ridiculous.

Personally, I think in that instance, the fee should be paid by the landlord. He/She goes through a realtor in order to have someone else worry about finding a tenant, screening people, advertising the apartment, etc.

If I walked into a realtor's office and said, "I want this and this and this in this area" and asked them to find it for me, then I'd be happy to pay the fee.

But to have to pay a person someone else decided to hire? That's insane.

Live and learn I suppose but that's the last time I look at an apartment with a fee.

I also think that in the last several years, the rental market in Jersey City has enjoyed an influx of new residents in August to October by recent college graduates with new jobs in the city looking for more affordable housing. However, the class of 2008 is I think largely unemployed still and probably not looking to move out on their own just yet.

Hi Brewster -

I have apartments downtown - and I'm always looking for new places to advertise vacancies.

So this weeks New York Magazine caught my eye. They had an article about cheap ways of finding apartments, and of course mentioned Craigslist...but then said there are some new alternatives.

Here's what they said:

Craigslist is king, but it?s not the world. Try Streeteasy.com, plus the online Times and Voice classifieds. RDNY.com and ListingSquare.com are less established but may also be worth a look.

I hope this helps,

Clay

www.jcity.org
www.walkandtalk.com

"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
~Michael Jordan,