One side of a SoHo street received protection as a historic district in 1973. Why does the unprotected side look so similar? The Landmarks Preservation Commission is reviewing a proposal to include the west side of West Broadway in the SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District

Rents in Manhattan increased in April, while the overall vacancy rate fell from 1.31 percent in March to 1.21 percent, according to a report by brokerage Citi Habitats.

Months before the completion of one of Downtown's largest townhouses, seller Steven Schnall said he has already seen interest from several potential buyers for his mansion at 2 North Moore Street in Tribeca, which hit the market with a $35 million price tag last month.

Critics say that the process the city uses to determine when to build new schools is flawed, preventing construction from keeping pace with residential development.

Private firms are buying up rent-regulated buildings and harassing tenants to increase vacancies, advocates say. They began seeing what they consider a pattern of harassment of low-income tenants this year and suspect that it is a result of the new owners’ business models.

The pair of buildings, by Jack Parker Corp. at 34 Desbrosses St., started rising on Watts and Desbrosses Sts. between Washington and West Sts. after the developer won a rezoning of four blocks in Northern Tribeca in 2006.

Students at P.S. and I.S. 89 have been waiting since last fall for the laptops promised by Time Equities, Inc. as part of a deal with the city to develop 50 West St.

In Manhattan below Chambers St., the number of housing units grew from 13,046 in 2000 to 28,613 this year, according to the Downtown Alliance. For every 10 new units of housing, the city should build at least one new elementary school seat, based on a formula from the City Environmental Quality Review technical manual. That means the city should have built at least 1,557 new elementary seats in Lower Manhattan in the past eight years.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission on Tuesday told St. Vincent’s Hospital and the hospital’s redevelopment partner, the Rudin Organization, to go back to the drawing board and come up with an entirely different project than the one submitted on Dec. 31.

Senator Richard C. Shelby’s links to the mortgage industry are raising questions because of his role in deciding the fate of a bill to help struggling homeowners.

Many on Wall Street, the epicenter of the credit mess, seem to think that the worst is over. For the first time in months, analysts and executives sound upbeat again. Many of them see a broad, sustained recovery in both the economy and the financial markets coming in the second half of this year, a prediction some market strategists call hopeful at best.

The House Financial Services Committee pushed forward with an aggressive effort to help troubled homeowners, approving legislation that would make up to $300 billion in federally insured loans available to refinance the mortgages of borrowers in danger of foreclosure.

In the statement, the Fed governors said seemed to signal that inflation was still a concern. They said a “substantial easing of monetary policy to date, combined with ongoing measures to foster market liquidity, should help to promote moderate growth over time and to mitigate risks to economic activity.”

The weak performance reflected the increasingly thrifty inclinations of American consumers in the face of plummeting real estate prices, tightening credit and a deteriorating job market. Economic growth was also hampered by a continued pullback in construction and business investment.

The debate over a property tax cap in New York may be finished before it started. Weeks before a special state commission is expected to recommend a plan for imposing a cap on local school property tax increases, state lawmakers are signaling that the proposal will be dead on arrival.

New York City Councilman and Peter Cooper Village resident Dan Garodnick helped Stuy Town (square) dance its way toward landmark designation recently, as tenants of the 110-building, World War II-era housing complex officially (re)launched their landmarks campaign.

The mortgage industry, facing the prospect of tougher regulations for its central role in the housing crisis, has begun an intensive campaign to fight back. One common industry criticism of the plan to put in place tougher regulations is that tighter rules could make many mortgages more expensive.

Inventories rose to the highest point in more than a quarter century as sales of new homes fell 8.5 percent, a far sharper decline than economists had forecast.

At the start of the spring selling season, the Manhattan luxury market is blessed with some two-of-a-kind town houses twins, giving buyers a chance for some real comparison shopping.

The dream: finding a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment in an elevator building with a doorman in Greenwich Village for $2,000 a month. The reality: nearly impossible. Everything you need to know to beat the competition and find that elusive place to live in New York City.

An $801,000 co-op sold at the Dakota, at 1 West 72nd Street facing Central Park, appears to have set a record as the highest-priced basement storage room in the annals of New York real estate.

Why haven’t housing prices dropped so much in some big cities? It might have something to do with the movement of ideas. In 1996, $300,000 would have bought you either a four-bedroom house on Spear Street in Vermont, or a small two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. Today the house would sell for about $600,000, while the apartment would cost more than $1 million.

Casting aside partisan differences, Senate Democratic and Republican leaders said that they would work urgently on a package of legislation to help millions of homeowners at risk of foreclosure. The push is the latest sign of a growing consensus that broader government action is needed to prevent a torrent of new foreclosures.

The New York City Council approved a measure urging state lawmakers to vote in favor of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's congestion pricing proposal. The vote was 30 to 20, with one member absent.

Jean Nouvel, the bold French architect known for such wildly diverse projects as the muscular Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and the exotically louvered Arab World Institute in Paris, has received architecture’s top honor, the Pritzker Prize.