Housing Starts: Old Politics, New Approach | City Real Estate Bubble? | Flastbush Development

Rendering for rental building in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn (Photo Credit: New York Observer)

1. Old Politics Hamper City’s New Approach on Affordable Housing Mr. de Blasio has promised to generate 80,000 units of affordable housing, many by requiring developers to include lower-rent apartments in exchange for permission to build taller towers. But almost a year into his administration, carving a smooth path for big, new development projects has proved challenging. [Wall Street Journal – 11/09/14]
2. Push to Bring Ex-Convicts and Families Together Lags Since 2011, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development has been prodding public housing agencies to change their admission rules to help recently released prisoners reunite with their families. The push is part of a nationwide movement to restore rights to prisoners, who are being released at the rate of 700,000 a year but often face job and housing barriers that make it difficult to get a fresh start. [New York Times – 11/09/14]
3. Top Developer Says New York Real Estate Market is a ‘Bubble’ About to Burst A prominent real estate bigwig caused a stir Thursday by admitting that the New York City residential property market is a big bubble waiting to pop. “If real estate was a publicly traded company and I could short its stock, I would very happily short 57th Street,” said Ofer Yardeni, CEO at real estate development firm Stonehenge Partners, referring to the stream of high-end towers popping up along 57th St.‘s “Billionaires” Row. [New York Daily News – 11/06/14]
4. The Next Housing Crisis May Be Sooner Than You Think When it comes to housing, sometimes it seems we never learn. Just when America appeared to be recovering from the last housing crisis—the trigger, in many ways, for 2008’s grand financial meltdown and the beginning of a three-year recession—another one may be looming on the horizon. There are at several big red flags. For one, the housing market never truly recovered from the recession. [Atlantic CityLab – 11/04/14]
5. Selling The Outer Boroughs to Foreign Investors Can Be Challenging News about billionaires from Russia, China, Brazil and other lands dropping tens of millions on Midtown trophy homes may generate yawns these days. But the industry is waking up to the massive sums from overseas pouring into New York City real estate on the building and portfolio level. Much of that money is finding a home in what just a few years ago was considered the far reaches of the city: Brooklyn and Queens. Foreigners invested more than $600 million in outer-borough real estate through the first half of the year, the most ever, according to data from Real Capital Analytics. Brooklyn received the vast majority of that speculation. [The Real Deal – 11/01/14]
6. High Hopes for New Apartment Complex City and state housing officials said the complex benefitted [sic] from a combination of public and private financing, with the state investing more than $3.7 million from its Regional Council initiative. It has 57 apartments that are limited to people whose income falls at certain levels below the area’s median income. Officials also praised the design that they said incorporates a number of energy-efficient technologies that will increase its energy efficiency and simultaneously reduce its operating costs. [Queens Chronicle – 11/06/14]
7. NYC Trump Co-Op Dwellers Face Million-Dollar Bills Manhattan’s surging land costs are leaving the shareholders of an East Side luxury co-operative with a tough choice: pay a hefty price to buy the land under the building, or face increasing bills to keep renting it. The ground beneath Trump Plaza, at 167 E. 61st St., is up for sale as land prices break records. The co-op board has offered to buy the property for $185 million, a cost that would saddle residents with assessments that, for some, would top $1 million, said Adam Leitman Bailey, a New York real estate attorney who has been contacted by owners concerned about the deal before it goes into contract. [Bloomberg – 11/06/14]
8. Next Stop, Flatbush: As Prime Land Values Double, Developers Try Out New Territories Soaring prices are pushing builders to give some less developed Brooklyn neighborhoods a look, putting places like Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Flatbush and Kensington on the list of up and comers. According to numbers from Brooklyn-based commercial real estate firm TerraCRG, since the borough’s housing market sputtered back to life several years ago, land values have skyrocketed, with a number of neighborhoods seeing roughly two-fold price increases. [New York Observer – 11/07/14]
9. Want to Boost Housing Values? Build a Walmart Walmart is so large that the company is an economic indicator in and of itself. One percent of the American workforce—about 1.4 million people—works for Walmart. The megachain’s 4,400 outlets account for 11 percent of all retail sales. Some 84 percent of U.S. households shop at Walmart; 42 percent of households do so regularly. Chances are you’ve heard of it. If a Walmart has moved into your community, then you’ve definitely heard of it. The retailer is one of the most prominent targets of NIMBY activism. Walmart opponents say that the chain is bad for workers, bad for small businesses, and bad for communities. [Atlantic CityLab – 11/05/14]
10. U.S. Regulator Says Lower Mortgage Down Payments Come with a Catch Americans who borrow to buy homes with 3 percent down payments under relaxed government rules will have to meet extra requirements to show they can pay the loan, such as having strong incomes or credit histories, a top regulator said on Friday. Mel Watt, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, announced last month that new rules were being developed to allow smaller down payments, part of a push to boost access to credit. [Reuters – 11/07/14]