For a while there, the cost of Class A office space in New York was tumbling amid thousands of layoffs, the Great Recession, cats and dogs living together, etc. Landlords were having to concede incentives like free rent and comped upgrades; and tenants were jumping at deals in addresses that in frothier times had higher barriers of entry.
That appears to have changed. Read More
Co-ops are the dominant form of for-sale housing on our fair isle, more difficult to get into (persnickety boards that have recently gotten that much more uppity) and generally more expensive to buy (bigger down payments and more stringent financial requirements). They account for roughly two-thirds of the Manhattan housing stock, with condos comprising much of the rest.
But, for a while there during the last decade, condos overtook co-ops as the preferred housing choice, maybe due to looser mortgages or just the simple ubiquity of all those gleaming, new towers. This reporter recalls offhand a study done by The Real Deal magazine that showed more than 9,000 condos proposed for Manhattan in 2005 alone—and most of them subsequently got built.
It appears, though, that the dowager has risen. Read More
Japanese bank Nomura’s decision to move out of the World Financial Center downtown and take 900,000 square feet at Worldwide Plaza in midtown is undoubtedly a blow for the tip of the island’s commercial future. The move will leave a huge vacancy at the Brookfield Properties-owned complex just as 3 million square feet of leases there are ending in 2013. (We saw the move coming in mid-May.)
But it’s more than just the vacancy. Read More
On Feb. 8, the city’s biggest building-sales brokerage, Massey Knakal, blasted a press release announcing the sale of a narrow, four-story, red-brick building along First Avenue, a block southwest of Stuyvesant Town. The walk-up rested snugly between a larger building cloaked in mesh and fronted by scaffolding and a similar-sized, white building. A chicken joint Read More
I was out of the country when Jimmy McMillan of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party put on his gubernatorial debate performance, and have only just now gotten around to subscribing to his newsletter. As best I can tell, Mr. McMillan’s platform is that New York City rents are too damn high and that’s Read More
