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Manhattan rent prices drop for luxury apartments, report says

Manhattan rents are getting cheaper for the rich, according to new real estate market data.

The median rent price for the entire borough fell between August and September, according to a report from the real estate group Douglas Elliman. It decreased by .1 percent between those two months and fell 1.2 percent year-over-year in September, the company found.

But that doesn’t signify that the entry level is becoming more affordable, noted Jonathan Miller, president of the real estate consulting firm Miller Samuel Inc., which aggregates Elliman’s data.

Year-over-year, rents in the luxury market declined while in the low end of the market they remained stagnant.

Specifically, the median rent price in the top 10 percent of the market fell 2.8 percent from September 2015 to 2016, but it remained unchanged in the bottom 30 percent, according to the report.

“The market is generally softer than what it was six months or a year ago, the softness is found more easily in the upper third of the market,” Miller explained. “Just because we’re seeing a little bit of decline [in the] aggregate, doesn’t mean … that rents still aren’t tight in the entry-level market.”

Meanwhile, the median rent in Brooklyn rose 2.4 percent to $2,949 from September 2015 to 2016, the report showed. In Queens, however, it fell 5.7 percent to $2,787 from September 2015 to 2016.