Housing Starts: New “Harlem Renaissance”? | Mayor’s Housing Surprise | Big Builders Turn to Housing

Looking across Hallets Cove, Queens to potential future development (Photo Credit: Bryan Thomas, New York Times).

1. New York’s Harlem Enjoys New Real Estate Renaissance Since emerging as the centre of African-American cultural life in the 1920s and 1930s, Harlem’s real estate fortunes have experienced highs and lows that few pockets of New York City have matched. Blighted by high crime and chronic decay in the 1970s and 1980s, a wave of development in the late 1990s led to a sharp rise in real estate values. Between 2002 and 2006 home prices in Harlem rose 89.7 per cent, according to the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University. Yet the 2008 banking crisis followed by steep economic decline pushed Harlem prices down 16 per cent between 2007 and 2010, compared with a 3 per cent fall in Manhattan as a whole. [Financial Times – 09/26/14]
2. Higher Land Prices Test Affordable-Housing Plan As land prices across Brooklyn increased in recent years, East New York benefited from its proximity to hot neighborhoods such as Bushwick and Crown Heights. Average land prices in Brooklyn rose 25% to $169 a square foot this year from $135 a square foot in 2013, according to Massey Knakal. East New York is a sprawling neighborhood the size of a small city, with a population of some 160,000, according to New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. The median income of $34,249 is far below the city’s median income of just under $52,000. [Wall Street Journal – 09/28/14]
3. Mayor’s Housing Surprise Mayor Bill de Blasio is not expected to require a massive increase in the percentage of affordable housing in new developments when he unveils his much-anticipated mandatory inclusionary housing proposal. Instead, his administration will attempt to boost the number of such units by asking developers to build near current benchmarks without subsidies, freeing up those subsidies for other projects. [Crain’s New York Business – 09/29/14]
4. Controversial Developer Buys Bronx Horse Stable and Promises ‘Beautiful’ Apartment Building The notorious cowboy of Pelham Parkway is being sent off into the sunset, and the controversial developer who landed the property is promising to replace the old paddock with something more stable. The builder, Mark Stagg, plans to replace Buster Marengo’s sorry-looking shed at 1680 Pelham Parkway South with a six-story, 130-unit apartment complex on the dead-end street that has been the decades-long site of the horse grounds. [New York Daily News – 09/25/14]
5. Guardian of a Brooklyn Housing Project Van Dyke sits at the heart of a nine-block area, known to census workers as Tract 910, that makes up the poorest neighborhood of significant size in the city, a 2014 analysis by the Queens College sociology department found. The 5,620 residents have a median household income of $11,220 annually from all sources, including welfare benefits and food stamps, compared with $51,865 for the city. About two-thirds are black, and one-third are Hispanic. [New York Times – 09/25/14]
6. Builders Turn Focus to Housing Market In a sign of New York City’s rapidly shifting real estate market, the Durst family, whose empire was built on a forest of Manhattan office towers, is plunging into the housing market with an ambitious plan for a sprawling residential development on the Queens waterfront. [New York Times – 09/26/14]
7. U.S. Pending Home Sales Fall More Than Expected in August Despite the drop, pending sales were still at the second-highest level of the year. In July, sales had risen 3.2 percent, a touch softer than the previously reported 3.3 percent gain. The index plunged last year after mortgage interest rates spiked, but have been on a rising trend since this past March. [Reuters – 09/29/14]
8. Block Near Final High Line Section Offers Grit, Real Estate Gold With the third and final section of the High Line now open, the elevated park that brought the Midas touch to far West Side real estate now heads for the first time across 11th Avenue. There, the views include the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, the still-uncapped section of the rail yards and a real, authentic New York City gas station. [The Real Deal – 09/25/14]
9. State Attorney General Extends Housing Protection Program New York State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman on Monday announced his office is committing up to $40 million in additional funding for the Homeowner Protection Program. The new funding, which brings the office’s total commitment to $100 million, will extend the program an additional two years. The program, HOPP, was established in 2012 and is designed to provide free housing counseling and legal services to homeowners facing foreclosure, and to keep those homeowners from navigating loan modification or foreclosure process alone. [The Troy Record – 09/28/14]
10. Towering Housing Development Planned for Sheepshead Bay A shopping mall is out, but a 30-story tower is coming to Sheepshead Bay. The developer behind a cluster of luxury condos in Brighton Beach plans to build a 333-foot-tall skyscraper just north of the Belt Parkway, permit applications show. [New York Daily News – 09/29/14]