RENTALS: Luxe condo rentals find eager market

The rental class has never had it so good.

Developers offer glut of properties — with perks.

Due to a glut of glitzy condo towers and the need to appease skittish lenders, some developers have found a new use for the gilded, clubby preserves once meant for buyers who could afford the seven-figure price tags. They’re renting them out and offering all of the perks normally reserved for the elite. The hand-watered grass roofs and outdoor movie theaters. The heated, valet-attended porte cocheres. The pet spas offering canine cardio and play dates for your puppy.

And developers have found that renters — reluctant to buy in a still-unsteady market —are embracing them. One marketing banner flapping against a ritzy, new rental building in New York says it best: “Repent. Rent. Repeat.’’

Frank Gehry’s crumpled, stainless-steel skyscraper in Manhattan — the tallest residential tower in the world — was originally supposed to include 200 sprawling condos along with 700 rentals. Now all of the critically acclaimed building’s apartments are for rent. The units, whose rents start at $2,630 for a 600-square-foot studio, are even rent-stabilized — meaning rents are regulated so tenants will only see small annual increases. The upgrades aren’t limited to New York buildings. In Chicago, a 547-square-foot studio in the Jeanne Gang-designed Aqua, with its liquid, undulating glass skin and curving balconies, can be had for $1,571. In late April at Silicon Valley’s Three Sixty Residences, the sales office re-opened as a rental office. Since 2007, not one of the building’s sleek condos, with their Bosch appliances and Del Tango cabinetry, had made it out of escrow and into a final sale, despite the fact that the plush residence sits in the middle of Silicon Valley, one of the nation’s top 10 millionaire hotspots.

During the credit bubble, the 651 units in New York’s MiMA might have gone into bidding wars, as similar properties had. Instead the developer put 500 of the apartments on the market as rentals. Since rentals in the Hell’s Kitchen building became available in mid-March, 70 percent of the rentals have been leased.

Among the new residents: New York writer Mark Simpson, 47, who looked at an apartment at MiMA because of the buzz the development had generated. Simpson took one look at the brushed-oak floors and floor-to-ceiling windows and filled out an application. In May, he moved into a 1,200-square-foot two-bedroom. He pays $6,400 a month for an apartment he says he could never afford to buy — and wouldn’t want to if he could.

“I have so many friends who are losing their shirts, I just don’t think real estate would be a good way to spend money at all’’ said Simpson.

That’s a departure from the attitude of the housing boom years. Renting used to be declasse among young, executive-class strivers, a sign that you couldn’t come up with the money for a down payment.

Conflicting signals about the market have only added to the allure of renting. Prices and interest rates are low. But lending standards are strict. Supply is abundant. But so are the forecasts that the United States could be in for a lost decade of sideways house prices. It’s led to a resurgence in people taking advantage of the “renter’s subsidy,’’ the idea that while real estate prices are stuck or moving lower, it’s better — and cheaper — to rent premium real estate than it is to buy.

Michelle Conlin Associated Press June 1, 2011