Delays Hinder Affordable Housing | Albany Rivalry Over Chase Settlement | Property Tax Increase

January 16th 2014

$613 Million JP Morgan Chase Settlement Stokes Long-Time Albany Rivalry

  1. Lottery slated for apartments in New Jamaica affordable housing. A new affordable housing complex in downtown Jamaica, offering 46 apartments and numerous amenities, is now accepting applications, Queens Borough President Melinda Katz announced Tuesday. The 9-story, energy-efficient Rufus King Court development, at 148-19 90th Ave., will offer apartments to families and individuals: studios are for individuals with an income range of $24,515 to $30,100; three-bedrooms are for families who make between $43,749 and $59,820, according to the borough president’s office. [DNAInfo – 01/15/14]
  2. NY housing ends 2013 strong. The New York City housing market exited 2013 strongly, according to fourth-quarter sales data for all five boroughs released Tuesday by the Real Estate Board of New York. In the fourth quarter, the total value of sales hit $9.6 billion, up a solid 29% from the same period last year, according to the data. [Crain’s New York Business – 01/14/14]
  3. Delays hinder affordable housing. When a nonprofit swooped in about two years ago to take over four Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment buildings in foreclosure, it was heralded as a victory for the city and housing advocates that would ensure the units would be repaired and kept affordable. Instead, the process has stalled in the courts as the buildings have fallen deeply into disrepair. The nonprofit, Mutual Housing Association of New York, may lose at least some of the buildings to a group of investors. [Wall Street Journal – 01/15/14]
  4. How Egyptian riots and the Greek recession are fueling London’s property boom. Interestingly, they find that the dynamics of London’s safe-haven status are not uniform across foreign buyers. Turmoil in China, Russia, and the Middle East is strongly correlated with price rises in well-to-do London neighborhoods, while upheaval in Southern Europe and South Asia is more closely linked with price hikes in lower-income wards with a large share of residents from those regions. The academics suggest that this could show that buyers from, say, Egypt are more interested in simply protecting their capital by investing in prime property in Mayfair, while Pakistanis buying in Southall are more likely to live in the homes they buy amidst pockets of their fellow countrymen. [The Atlantic Cities – 01/14/14]
  5. Time Warner nears deal to sell headquarters. The transaction would be one of the biggest in a surge of deals involving foreign investors in U.S. commercial real estate. Increased demand from overseas has helped drive U.S. commercial property values to record levels, particularly in major cities favored by global firms. [The Wall Street Journal – 01/15/14]
  6. Manhattan West will have twice as much open space. Hudson Yards gets the lion’s share of attention on the west side, but just one block away, another mega project is shaping up. It’s been nearly a year since we heard anything about Brookfield’s under-construction Manhattan West development, but at a public meeting last night, the developer reminded the world that the mixed-use project still exists, outlining plans for the project’s public space. Brookfield wants to create nearly twice as much open space than what is required by the city, expanding it from the mandated 1.3 acres (49,400 square feet) to 2.11 acres (91,725 square feet). [Curbed – 01/09/14]
  7. New York’s mortgage bank hunter may not be able to direct his spoils. A few months back, the attorney general went hunting and came back wrapped in the furs of JPMorgan Chase, which agreed to pay $613 million to New York. The attorney general saw a unique chance to move beyond the five years of trench warfare with banks. He wants to explore writing down thousands of troubled mortgages. Governor Cuomo has his own transformational ideas. His staff has strongly hinted that the $613 million should get funneled into the state treasury, to help pay for a thick menu of election year tax cuts, $2 billion in all. [NY Times – 01/13/14]
  8. State officials probe rent hikes in Washington Heights. State investigators are probing an uptown real estate mogul for hiking tenants’ rent - by double digits rates - sparking a fierce housing battle in Washington Heights. The Division of Housing and Community Renewal, the state agency that monitors New York’s rent regulation rules, is trying to determine whether Dough Eisenberg and his building management company, A&E Real Estate Holdings, can demand the exorbitant increases. [New York Daily News – 01/15/14]
  9. Higher taxes on the way for New Yorkers. New York City’s property-tax base rose at its second-fastest pace in two decades, potentially creating a windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars for Mayor Bill de Blasio as he seeks to carry out his policy agenda. [Wall Street Journal – 01/16/14]
  10. City’s affordable housing units dwindle. The Bloomberg administration marshaled billions of dollars to create and preserve affordable housing, but a new report said the city lost 40% of apartments for low-income residents over the last decade. The study by the Community Service Society, a nonprofit advocacy group for low-income New Yorkers, underscores the challenges faced by new Mayor Bill de Blasio. He has promised to create 50,000 units of affordable housing, a number that may barely match the loss of rent-stabilized housing and cheap apartments in increasingly desirable areas of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. [Wall Street Journal – 01/15/14]
« Previous | The Stoop | Next »