New York City apartment landlords have been ratcheting up rents as the economy has slowly improved. But that doesn’t mean that tenants will keep paying the increases.
High-end apartment owner Equity Residential, the country’s largest publicly traded apartment landlord, reported last week that its occupancy in New York City fell 0.9% to 95.3% during the first three months of the year. Among other reasons, the company cited turnover from increasingly high rents, which were up 1.6% from the prior quarter and 6.7% from one year ago.
The company, the chairman of which is real estate tycoon Sam Zell, has seen …
