Housing Starts: Map Shows Rental Nightmare | Court Delivers Blow to NYC Owners | NYC Hotel Boom

March 6th 2015

Image Credit:Morris Adjmi Architects

  1. Nifty Neighborhood Housing Map Highlights NYC’s Rental Nightmare In case you don’t spend enough time obsessing over NYC’s obscene rental market, real estate website StreetEasy has been kind enough to craft an interactive map that colorfully points out which neighborhoods suck whole paychecks into the ground, where Sarlacc slowly digests them over a thousand years of gentrification. StreetEasy’s map pairs forecasted median incomes in 2015 with forecasted median asking rents, discovering quite a few neighborhoods where incomes fall well below the affordability threshold for rents (30 percent). According to the website, median rent will likely hit $2,700 this year, and since rental prices have outpaced inflation, New Yorkers can expect to pay 58.4 percent of their median incomes on rent this year. [Gothamist – 03/03/15]
  2. Court Delivers Major Blow to Property Owners It’s official: Tenants in New York City who file for bankruptcy won’t lose their below-market-rate apartments, thanks to a pair of opinions from the New York State Court of Appeals and the Manhattan-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Combined, the decisions remove the threat that people who file for bankruptcy in New York will be evicted from valuable apartments even though they’re current on the rent. A group representing city landlords said the decisions ‘open the floodgates of imposing unprecedented financial and legal obligations’ on ‘private property owners who provide rent-controlled apartments.’” [Crain’s NY Business – 03/03/15]
  3. Is New York City’s Hotel Boom Ruining Everything? There are a lot of hotels under construction in New York, and new data shows that this may be problematic. A new report from the Pratt Center for Community Development argues that hotels are negatively impacting many neighborhoods by undermining affordable housing initiatives and driving out industrial businesses. From 2004 to 2013, 180 hotels were built in New York City, with the bulk of these rising in M1-zoned areas like the Garment District, Long Island City, and Gowanus. [Curbed NY – 03/04/15]
  4. Rezoning on Jerome Ave. To Result in Housing, Jobs One of the main thoughfares in the west Bronx is the subject of a rezoning plan. Jerome Avenue, a two mile, 72-block stretch ranging just south of Mullaly Park, north to Woodlawn Cemetery is currently undergoing an evaluation which will result in more affordable housing units, jobs and zoning changes in Community Board 7, as well as boards 4 and 5. For this plan, the NYC Department of City Planning, who is working with the Housing Preservation and Development, Parks and Recreation, the NYC Economic Development Corporation and Small Business Services on this project, is encouraging local residents, businesses and institutions to evaluate and identify the areas’ opportunities, so that housing units, jobs and economic development can come to fruition while existing housing, pedestrian safety, parks and schools, among other attributes, are improved.” [Bronx Times – 03/04/15]
  5. Crown Heights Landlord Is Taking Tenants to Court in Attempt to Drastically Raise Their Rent Residents of two Crown Heights apartment buildings say they’re being unfairly sued by their new landlords in an attempt to increase rent costs and, in two cases, force tenants to withdraw building complaints filed with the state. Renaissance Realty bought 285 Schenectady Avenue and 1646 Union Street in Crown Heights in early 2014 and is currently suing twelve tenants for failing to sign new leases requiring them to pay drastically higher rent. Meanwhile, tenants are responding that their apartments are barely worth living in — let alone worth, in some cases, more than twice their current monthly rent. [Village Voice – 03/05/15]
  6. This May Be The Answer to New York City’s Housing Crisis New York City has a housing problem: Real estate is too expensive, and there’s not enough of it. The city is betting on solutions like My Micro NY, a pioneering new project that’s currently in construction, with prefabricated units smaller than most existing studio apartments. The units are being constructed locally, and will eventually be assembled in downtown Manhattan. The apartments will be for one to two people and range in size from 250 to 350 square feet. [CBS 6 – 03/04/15]
  7. When the Path to Homeownership Runs Through Public Housing Over 40 million American households now rent their homes and apartments, as homeownership has declined in the shadow of the foreclosure crisis and the global financial recession. Renting certainly offers perks. Shoveling the snow off the front sidewalk? Not your problem. Same goes for fixing broken appliances, or shelling out cash for major, unexpected repairs. But renting also presents a singular financial challenge: it does not allow people to save by building up equity in their homes, and that remains one of the best ways for Americans to accumulate assets. That’s why policy and housing experts want to find ways to encourage renters to save. One potential model comes from the federal government’s own Family Self-Sufficiency Program. [City Lab – 03/04/15]
  8. ‘Scandal’ of Empty Apartments May be Worse in London New York isn’t the only city with a pied-à-terre issue, with foreigners buying apartments that they visit only periodically, if ever. The phenomenon—which has been blamed for the high cost and low supply of housing—is perhaps more pronounced in London, where it has been controversial for several years. The Islington section of that city even proposed jailing investors who leave homes empty after an analysis revealed no one was living in as many as 25% of developments built in the last six years. [Crain’s New York – 03/05/15]
  9. New York City Is Still Cheaper For Renters Than San Francisco Next time you find yourself weeping in a corner after forking over half your paycheck for rent, take comfort in this thought: at least you don’t live in San Francisco. For the seventh month straight, San Francisco topped New York City in February as the most expensive city for renters. The latest Zumper report shows that New York’s median for one-bedrooms remained flat at $3,000, while SF’s rose 1.5 percent to $3,460. SF rents also topped NYC rents for two- and three-bedroom units. [Curbed NY – 03/04/15]
  10. As Luxury Real Estate Grows, Its Classification Blurs Luxury—defined by Miriam-Webster as both ‘a condition of great comfort, ease, and wealth’ and ‘something that is not usually or always available.’ While New York City is without a doubt experiencing a wave of luxury real estate boasting affluence and amenity, the breadth of properties defined by this category lingers as a paradox. The New York Observer analyzed the increase of ‘luxury’ properties and their exit from exclusivity, noting, “...‘luxury’ in New York City nowadays appears to be anything but ‘not usually available.’” It is now important to understand that if luxury is no longer defined by exclusivity, then where the classification comes from. [Huffington Post – 03/04/15]
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