The biggest factor for bicycle riders when it comes to staying safe is predictability. Cars on the Brooklyn Bridge road would be far safer because the tourists are completely unpredictable. You never know what they are going to do.

Cars are mostly predictable, 80-90% of the time, a cyclist knows what cars are going to do before they do it, leaving you to deal with other issues such parked cars opening doors, potholes, pedestrians etc.

As far as walking over the bridge with bikes, I invite rail commuters to get out of the train car, walk for a mile, and then get back in the train car on their way to work. Sounds like fun doesn't it?

Posted by: Kannerr at September 29, 2009 3:21 PM in response to Bikes and Bodies on the Brooklyn Bridge

How can this not already be land-marked? Go ahead, destroy history for some ugly new poorly built money grab. Generations have been able to enjoy this place and now, in some fight over large amounts of money that the earners will never be able to spend in their lifetime, future generations will never enjoy it. People just can't get their heads around the fact that they are only on this planet for a limited amount of time and that their actions have long lasting effects on what happens later. You can't take it with you man, and no one will remember you when you're gone.

Posted by: Kannerr at August 3, 2009 11:05 AM in response to Fight to Landmark the Home of Nathan's

5% flip tax

Posted by: Kannerr at July 2, 2009 11:20 PM in response to Co-op of the Day: 201 Clinton Avenue, #15E

This makes you hate white people.

Posted by: Kannerr at June 23, 2009 5:21 PM in response to Closing Bell: Quidditch in McCarren Park

THis is Goldman from late January:

We use the recently introduced S&P/Case-Shiller index for
condominium prices to assess the valuation of the New York apartment
market. Although housing market valuation typically has little
predictive value for the near term, it is useful for anticipating
longer-term moves, especially when prices are far away from
equilibrium.

· Indeed, New York apartment prices are very high relative to
the observable fundamentals. Using three alternative
yardsticks—price/rent, price/income, and affordability —we find that
prices would need to decline by 35%-44% to return to the valuation
levels seen in the 1995-1999 period, before the start of the recent
boom.

· The uncertainty is substantial. On the one hand, the picture
would worsen further if per-capita incomes in Manhattan returned from
their current level of 3 times the national norm toward the pre-1990s
average of 2 times the national norm. On the other hand, it would
brighten somewhat if jumbo mortgage rates converged toward conforming
rates, perhaps because of a broadening of the Fed's support measures.
In addition, societal and demographic changes could also help, though
these types of arguments are difficult to quantify and are often heard
just prior to a real estate market downturn.

Following a decade-long boom, activity in the New York City apartment
market is now slowing sharply. The sales reports for the fourth
quarter of 2008 released on Monday by two of the largest New York real
estate brokers—the Corcoran Group and Prudential Douglas
Elliman—suggest that sales dropped by 25%-30% from the fourth quarter
of 2007 (see "Striking Declines Seen in Manhattan Real Estate Market,"
New York Times, January 6, 2009, page A20). Although the prices of
closed sales were little changed from a year earlier, one analyst
estimated that the prices of apartments that were under contract but
had not yet closed fell by 20% from August to December. Moreover, it
is well known that prices lag sales activity in the housing market, so
most observers agree that both contract and closing prices are likely
to decline in the near term.

Information on sales and price momentum is very helpful for predicting
near-term moves in the real estate market. But in order to gauge the
longer-term outlook, it is better to look at fundamental valuation
indicators, such as the level of prices relative to rents or incomes,
either directly or adjusted by mortgage interest rates. These types
of variables don't have much predictive power over the near term, but
they start to become much more powerful at horizons longer than 1-2
years.

Until recently, a fundamental analysis of the New York apartment
market was hampered by the lack of high-quality price data. The
various brokerage firms publish mean and median prices for both co-ops
and condos on a quarterly basis, but these are difficult to interpret
due to significant changes over time in the size and quality of
apartments being sold. In addition, research firm Radar Logic, Inc.,
publishes a "price per square foot" series for the New York condo
market. However, there is only a year's worth of history, and changes
in the average quality of homes sold can still distort the data even
though the Radar Logic approach does control for variations in size.

But the data situation has improved dramatically with the recent
broadening of the S&P/Case-Shiller (CS) repeat sales home price index
to cover five of the nation's largest condominium markets, including
New York. These indexes stretch back to 1995—not as far as we would
like but much better than what is available currently—and they adjust
for changes in both size and quality of the condos by using only
matched price observations involving successive transactions in the
same condominium for estimating the overall change in prices.

Admittedly, a repeat sales index does not perfectly adjust for quality
changes. In theory, the bias could work in either direction. On the
one hand, wear and tear will reduce the value of a given condominium
over time if the owner does not look after the property well. On the
other hand, upgrades such as new flooring or a nicer kitchen may raise
the value. While the CS index seeks to eliminate the influence of
these factors by downweighting price change observations that are far
out of line with local comparables, this is unlikely to eliminate all
sources of bias. Still, we believe that a repeat sales index is far
superior to the available alternatives for the purpose of measures
changes in underlying real estate prices.

In analyzing the data, it is useful to look first at the raw numbers
for New York condo prices. As shown in the table below, nominal
prices tripled from 1995 to 2006, went essentially sideways in 2007,
and have declined by about 3% in 2008. The stability since 2005 is
somewhat at odds with reports from the New York real estate brokers
that still show meaningful gains in mean and median prices over this
period. However, we suspect that the apparent contrast is resolved by
a shift in transactions toward larger and higher-quality apartments
over this period, which would increase the mean and median price
figures but leave the CS index unaffected.

Index

(Jan 2000=100)

Oct-95

75.3

Oct-96

75.4

Oct-97

80.6

Oct-98

89.2

Oct-99

97.5

Oct-00

111.3

Oct-01

126.7

Oct-02

144.3

Oct-03

161.2

Oct-04

188.8

Oct-05

222.6

Oct-06

227.4

Oct-07

226.7

Oct-08

221.1

Source: Standard and Poor's.

But are the price gains sustainable? To assess this, we focus on
three primary valuation measures:

1. Price/rent ratio. We divide the CS index by the Bureau of Labor
Statistics' index of owners' equivalent rent for the New York
metropolitan area, and index the resulting ratio to 100 for the
average of the 1995-1999 period. We choose this base period because
it mostly precedes the recent boom but covers a period when the
quality of life in Manhattan had already improved significantly from
the 1980s and early 1990s. Hence, a return to the average 1995-1999
valuation level might seem like a fairly neutral assumption.

2. Price/income ratio. We divide the CS index by the Bureau of
Economic Analysis' measure of personal income per capita, and again
index the resulting ratio to 100 for 1995-1999. Although the condo
price index covers the entire New York metro area, we use an income
series for the County of New York (i.e., Manhattan) rather than the
entire metro area. The New York condo market is quite concentrated in
Manhattan; this concentration is particularly pronounced in the CS
index because it is weighted by value rather than units and therefore
typically assigns a much greater weight to condo sales on Fifth Avenue
than in Queens. (Note that New York County income is only available
through 2006; we somewhat optimistically assume that it has grown at
the average national rate since then.)

3. Affordability. Using a standard mortgage

Posted by: Kannerr at June 18, 2009 11:08 AM in response to Bank Predicts NYC Market to Fall Another 40 Percent

The source:

New York is least affordable of the Top 10 In New York, prices still have to drop an additional 32.0% from Q1 2009 levels just to restore
affordability to its historic high (1998), as has already occurred in
74 of the top 100 markets. But including model risk factors beyond just affordability, we are projecting a 40.6% decline, from Q1 2009. This is, however, improvement from the projected decline that we published in March (47.4%). The improvement is due simply to the fact that recent price declines have brought New York closer to the trough. Somewhat confusingly, actual home price declines
can impact our analytical framework in competing ways. First, all else
equal, if prices have declined, then the MSA should be that much closer to its bottom for
prices. However, because our model also includes a risk factor score for negative home
price momentum, dramatic price declines can also have at least a partially offsetting
negative effect. The peak for home prices in the New York MSA was in Q2 2007, when the median home price hit $552k. As of Q1 2009, the median home price had dropped to $446k, down 19% from the peak. While this is painful, it pales in comparison to what
has already been experienced in many other regions of the country, particularly in
parts of California, Florida, Arizona and Nevada. Many MSAs in those states peaked earlier than New York and prices have been falling in those areas for longer. Our total, peak-to-trough forecasted decline in New York is 52.1%

Posted by: Kannerr at June 18, 2009 10:26 AM in response to Bank Predicts NYC Market to Fall Another 40 Percent

I look forward to the co-op/condo of the day because usually it posts apartments that are at least somewhat affordable. Lately however, specifically the past two days, we have seen apartments with multi-million dollar price tags. Does anyone feel that this section is best served by posts of under a million? Perhaps there should be a under a million property of the day? Is this asking too much? Am I way off here?

Posted by: Kannerr at May 7, 2009 1:52 PM in response to Condo of the Day: 70 Washington Street, #9G

I would really prefer that these prices are not referred to as "not crazy money".

Posted by: Kannerr at March 23, 2009 3:08 PM in response to House of the Day: 465 13th Street

Why is maintenance almost always so much higher than the rest of Brooklyn. I know the heights is upscale, but come on. There is a loft on Hicks that has a charge of over $2000. It's crazy. It's always such a mystery charge, I'd love to see line-item breakdowns of these maints.

Posted by: Kannerr at March 17, 2009 1:16 PM in response to Co-op of the Day: 160 Columbia Heights

What a shame. With all the money around over the past few years, even if it destroyed the economy, we had a great opportunity to build the next generation of great Brooklyn housing. Instead of thinking long term, developers threw up hideous rush jobs than will mar the landscape for at least a generation. Look what we were given, and then look at what our generation provided to the borough. Now we must live with this shortsighted real estate. Shame.

Posted by: Kannerr at February 27, 2009 1:22 PM in response to A Rocky Start at The Clermont