It may be the year of the condo, as The New York Times claims, but with the sudden surge of high-end inventory, developers are seeing pushback, according to Crain’s. “You’re seeing developers beginning to charge $2,700 per square foot and above, based on the fact that they installed fancy kitchens in a project,” one developer told the paper. “They have to face the fact that there are fundamental factors that dictate those kinds of prices, like views and location, that a lot of them just don’t have.”
Might a slight ultra-luxury slowdown market mean that developers actually focus on more affordable projects? As another article in Crain’s points out: the 60% increase in construction work has translated to only a 22% rise in the number of units.
The Times takes a late-night PATH train to New Jersey and discovers that there are quite a few people on the train after 1 a.m., during the 4 middle-of-the night hours when the Port Authority has considered cutting service, making the prospect of New Jersey living less than appealing for a lot of service and entertainment workers. “I guess I’d have to buy a car, or move to the city, neither of which I want to do,” says a bartender.
It’s a change that might make Hoboken, less attractive not only for the 20-something partiers for which the city is known, but also for the recent influx of families willing to shell out big bucks for luxury condos. Then again, the kind of people who spend $995,000 on a 1,250-square-foot two-bedroom condominium in Hoboken, as one couple The Times recently talked to, did, might be impervious to reason.
Everyone else, however, even those who can afford not to, want good access to public transportation (which also includes late night service, we’d assume?), and a recent study finds that it correlates to earning power, according to Gothamist.
Newcastle Realty, the landlord of a Harlem apartment building, which has lacked gas since a July 8 fire, provided market-rate tenants with electric stoves, while rent-stabilized tenants have been forced to make-do with hot plates, according to DNAInfo. (However, it seems that Newcastle was not exactly forthcoming with the electric stoves for anyone.)
Office landlords have reason to welcome 2015: Manhattan’s office-leasing market is improving, with rising rents and vacancy rates falling to 9.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014, according to The Wall Street Journal, a 1.6 percent decrease from the previous year.
Meanwhile Sutton Place, despite this weekend’s hedge fund murder, has not gone from ritzy to crime-ridden, notes the New York Daily News. Despite a reportedly lax performance from the doorman that day, the murder was all in the family.
