New York City, After the Boom
After an extraordinary era of construction and renovation, demolition and replacement, there will almost certainly come a long period in which little to nothing gets built…We have inherited, from the good years, a glut of housing, almost all of it of the unaffordable kind—condos galore—and an increase in office space amid a sudden, steep decrease…
I was on the subway the other day, and I overheard a conversation about a couple who were leaving the city for Austin, TX. I would have thought nothing of it, but then 10 minutes later, I learned a friend of a friend (in finance) was leaving because his company restructured to New Jersey to save costs.
Are we a growing or shrinking city? A few years ago, it seemed like everyone was moving into the city. But I don’t hear so much chatter any more. Only anecdotal of course, I bet soon the NYT will have some article that investigates whether people are leaving or moving to NYC.
i personally love the image of new york as a city of half finished luxury condos full of the homeless squatters surronding bins of burning construction debris to keep warm
There maybe a demand but no supply of money Dumbasses! Just clap you asscheack and chant “These is no place like 2005” ROTMFFLMMFAO!!!!!
RIP Mutant Asset Bubble, GAME OVER!!
Oh BTW I’m loving it!!!
The What
Someday this war is gonna end…
nyc boom/bust was demand driven. Prices backed by artificial credit. There will be no demand until $$$/income come back in line. Open your eyes, we’ve got a way to go…
Supply and demand goes up and it comes down. The great-paying jobs in the financial sector that new graduates could slip into have dried up. If those graduates can’t land those jobs, they won’t come to NY. Last year’s grads are languishing. Soon even folks who graduated several years ago will find themselves unemployed and facing fierce competition for any new position. The jobs will re-emerge but probably not until 2011, until then who is going to fill up those expensive sexy condos? Nobody.
Without the big bucks from the investment, insurance, re-insurance, and law offices, you’re left with a big gap in demand. In addition, professionals in architecture, engineering. real estate, and construction are getting laid-off like crazy. Even hospitals are tanking. We are looking at a period of dimished earnings. if you think that will not have any consequences on the real estate market, you’re dreaming.
I don’t think cornerbodega has ever heard of a little thing called supply and demand.
It will eventually cornerbodega…that’s why they call it a cycle.
Yup, construction stopping dead on its tracks because reality has set in and you idiots argue this will drive prices back up. Lol morons.
Prodigal_Son:
The closest thing you would find is data published on The Real Deal. They haven’t updated the website data however since 2006. They still publish it however in their data book.
Street Easy is close, but it is hardly a definitive list and as I said yesterday – I don’t trust their contract data. Wirenewyork.com has a great site where lots of posters discuss projects pretty much as soon as a knockdown occurs. REIS, a non-free service, does have national data regarding stuff under construction – but their NYC data isn’t very useful. Elsewhere it is very good.
Unfortunately, data on new construction is really only of interest to people like me who write economic reports for interested parties. Even sites like Propertyshark seem more oriented towards small investors, and not people looking to put together future supply projections.
You just have to take a survey of the neighborhood that interests you, not what’s happening, and pound the pavement to find out what if anything is planned for the sites in question. It can take a while for DOB filings or condo declarations to tell you what is going on.
It ain’t easy, but that’s why analyzing real estate is far more interesting than other financial assets – it actually takes work to find out the real truth. That’s also why it just doesn’t work well for a website. You can’t just pull data from other public sources like Propertyshark does. You’d need to hire people to do the work for you.
On a side note, there is a lot of data for non-residential product. As an example, Smith Travel publishes a lot of reports on hotel related stuff. Their pipeline report is great – they tell you all about hotel projects, the projected construction schedule, how many rooms, and other fun stuff. It’s about $500 a report.
The real issue I’ve found in New York City regarding residential development is there is little need to prove supply and demand – everyone knows the supply doesn’t at all meet the demand. The issue is never if a residential property will find renters or buyers, only what price. The same can’t be said for other asset classes however, so the data is a bit more valuable – so people do it.