Regular readers know that I approve all of our tenants personally.
Why?
Well, I’m the one who’s going to have to deal with going to eviction court if they turn out to be screw-ups, so it’s best that I sign off on them upfront.
But there’s another reason, too: Reviewing all the tenant applications gives me insight into the kind of people our units attract.
And right now, the key insight is that something like 10-20% of our applicants are creatives coming from Brooklyn.
Not NYC as a whole; Brooklyn.
To me, this says the Eastside is starting to see an influx of relatively well-educated, well-paid renters coming from a market with much higher rents than our own. You can guess what I think that will do to asking rents over the medium term.