Renters in New York get a relative break

Manhattan apartment rents fell last month as landlords’ pricing power was hurt by a wave of new listings and tenants who shopped around.

The median monthly rent was $3,396, down 1.2 percent from September 2015, according to a report this past week by appraiser Miller Samuel and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

A surge of construction is adding thousands of new apartments in Manhattan, slowing momentum for landlords, who had pushed up rents as much as 20 percent since the end of the recession in June 2009.

The inventory of available listings at the end of September climbed 35 percent from a year earlier to 7,392, Miller Samuel and Douglas Elliman said.

Landlords offered discounts averaging 2.8 percent in order to reach a deal. Sweeteners, such as a month’s free rent, were included in 15 percent of all new leases. In the yearearlier period, only 8.7 percent of deals came with such concessions.

Newly signed leases jumped 51 percent, a sign that tenants are finding better deals by moving out rather than renewing their agreements.

“I don’t think anybody’s saying that rents are cheap now, it’s just that there’s no growth,” said Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel.

Rents fell in some of Manhattan’s priciest neighborhoods last month. In Soho and Tribeca, one-bedroom apartments averaged $3,597, or 5.8 percent less than a year earlier. The average for one-bedrooms in the West Village was $3,752, down 3.6 percent.