Housing Construction Rises Fivefold Since '95

July 3, 2006 — The Big Apple’s residential building boom is reaching historic proportions, with developers last year planning five times more private housing units citywide than a decade ago.
The city issued building permits for 31,599 new residential units – up 25 percent from 2004, 87 percent from 2001 and 515 percent from the paltry 5,135 units constructed in 1995, a Post analysis of census data found. The neighborhoods seeing the greatest growth in New York’s biggest real-estate boom since the 1960s are Manhattan’s Chelsea-Clinton area, Greenpoint and Williamsburg in Brooklyn, and the Rockaways in Queens.

“I think people are amazed at how the city bounced back after 9/11,” said Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, who attributed the housing boom to low interest rates and city streets becoming cleaner and safer. And there’s no end in sight. The New York Building Congress, a trade organization, estimates that another 30,000 new housing units will be built in the city each year from 2006 through 2008. Census data examined for the first three months of this year supports the group’s claim.

“There’s unprecedented confidence in our city’s future,” Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff said. “People see it’s safer, the educational system is improving, there’s a record number of jobs being filled, and it encourages investment.” City officials said a driving factor is that at least 30,000 new housing units are expected to be built through rezoning plans approved last year aimed at generating more residential growth in West Chelsea and Hudson Yards in Manhattan, Downtown Brooklyn and Greenpoint.
Housing Construction Rises Fivefold [NY Post]