Sep. 11, 2009 - 8 years, still fresh

quote of the day
Rudy Giuliani, whom I loathe, read this morning from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom I revere. Let's just say that Rudy made a nice choice:

“Everybody can be great,” he said, “because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.”

R.I.P.  2,752 souls (up 1 since last year) Plus those at The Pentagon and in Shanksville.

Basic coverage, with a strong WTC-focus: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/remembering-the-horror-of-a-bright-blue-morning/?hp

(as if you need additional links for this)

© Sandy Mattingly 2009

Feb. 10, 2009 - diversion / art from a Manhattan loft neighborhood

Nov. 8, 2008 - into the melting pot (with a grain of salt?)

'minority' majority + bare majority only English

Crain's New York Business had an on-line link yesterday to some "City Facts" that are intersting but that made me wonder if I needed salt with those (fries). (Their visuals are more ... well, visual than my text will be....)

Crain's Fact #1: in 2006, the racial/ethnic (not the same things, but oh well ... that's what the Census Bureau does too) background of the 8,214,426 estimated residents of New York City were (1) "White" 34.5%, (2) Hispanic/Latino 27.9%, (3) Black/African American 23.8%, and (4) Asian 11.5%. In other words, we are (and have been for a while) a city in which the so-called "majority" is a minority of the population. While 1.3% is reported as "other", 0.9% is reported as "two or more races", which I found to be surprisingly low.

Unfortunately, I can't click to a source for these data from Crain's, so I don't know how reliable the data are.

Some salt: I went to the US Census Bureau web page, here, where I easily found information from 2000 (if they have updated ethnic/race data I did not dig for it). If the search page holds, you will see that in 2000 the White proportion was reported as 44.7% of the City's population, with Hispanic/Latino as 27%, Black as 26.6%, and Asian as 9.8%. So, way back then us white folk were an overall minority, but not nearly as dramatically as claimed by Crain's for 2006.

Could the mix have changed so much in 6 years? (Note that the Census estimates the 2006 population as the figure that Crain's uses, 8,214,426, which is only a 2.6% overall increase -- hardly enough to swing the ratios even if all the 2.6% were non-white.) And note that the Black/AA and Asian proportions are lower in the Crain's 2006 numbers than in the Census Bureau's 2000 numbers. So, use the salt here....

Crain's Fact #2:  in 2006, out of a total of 7,637,820 people of the age of 5 or older (funny way to count, but, whatever) in the City, (only) 3,981,767 speak only English at home (which is 52.1% -- a bare majority), while 1,883,804 (also?) speak Spanish, 381,506 (also?) speak Chinese, 193,563 (also?) speak Russian, and 174,140 (also?) speak French (including Creole and other derivatives). 

The remainder is a rather large number of 'other' New Yorkers -- some 600,000+ folks aged 5 or older who may speak English at home but also (or exclusively) speak a language other than Spanish, Chinese, Russian or French.

Did you notice how the French and Russian language speakers seem to have been reversed (or something) in the Crain's chart? Perhaps the Russian speakers were counted with a surge at the end, that upset their sequencing?? ;-) 

Note to self: check other cities in the 2000 Census Bureau data to see how relatively diverse our NYC melting pot is.

Oct. 2, 2008 - Manhattan as 'different' (not unique) / counting geniuses + immigrants

a reflection, not a rigorous analysis
I am not a card-carrying member of the Manhattan Is Unique So Real Estate Price Will Never Come Down party, but I have audited classes in the Manhattan Market Is Different school.

I noted with interest an article about the number of MacArthur Foundation grants to Manhattan residents when the NY Times reported on that last week (September 26: A Genius on Every Block? No, but It Seems That Way), which lead to the kernel of an idea about a blog post, which got overlooked in the press of the Business and Life Continuum. I was thinking aboutabout how this article about Manhattan-as-magnet-for-talent had real estate relevance. posting

But what spurred me to actually use bandwidth and time to address this was this piece reported yesterday on-line in the national REALTOR® rag (and sourced to Forbes) about some cities losingtheir attraction for immigrants (Where the Melting Pot Has Frozen). Sort of the other side (or another side) of the same coin.

on the one hand, a draw
Clyde Haberman of the Times points out that

As Haberman explains about these so-called "genius" grants, MacArthur officials frown on the word “genius,” leaving it to journalists and assorted other hacks. Rather, the foundation says that it looks for women and men who are able to “transcend traditional boundaries,” who are risk-takers even in the face of obstacles, who can “synthesize disparate ideas and approaches.”

I have said repeatedly the one of the things that makes our local real estate market different from others is that Manhattan has always been a magnet for creativity, ambition and entrepreneurship. In the context of a city deemed to be safer and more 'livable' by people with huge wealth or income who used to move to the 'burbs, that has definitely helped create demand for scarce Manhattan housing. Add the globalization of wealth and travel to that creativity-ambition-entrepreneurship magnet, and there is yet another different strand increasing demand.

Haberman put it poetically, in historical terms:

(I HEART Clyde.) Note that, in my opinion, neither Boston nor California have other attractions to a global market that Manhattan has.

Of course, these kind of attractions are both ephemeral and fragile. There is no reason to assume that they will continue to make Manhattan a different real estate market indefinitely, and it may be hard to predict when an accumulation of 'bad news' will hurt the Manhattan 'brand' enough to make a significant difference. But I see that situation holding, at least until we see more and deeper bad news on a systemic basis.

(snobbery, admitted
Yes, Haberman talks about MacArthur grants to city residents, rather than to Manhattan residents. But I am enough of a Manhattan snob to assume that the bulk of "city residents" who win these grants are Manhattan-based, either as residents or workers. [Go ahead, prove me wrong.]

I don't think it much matters for my general point, however.)

on the other hand, not so much
Not only do other cities generally lack the creativity-ambition-entrepreneurship magnet that Manhattan has, but other cities are losing the degree to which they are attractive to immigrants at all, at least according to Forbes. As reported on-line by REALTOR.org,

They don't mention New York, which still seems to be a magnet for immigrants based on everything I have read. (No sourcing here, but I recall reading that New York City's recent population growth is entirely attributable to in-migration of foreign-born and increased birth rate among recent immigrants.) But they did count the cities with the lowest percentages of foreign-born residents:

• Pittsburgh, 3.1 percent
• Cincinnati, 3.5 percent
• St. Louis, 4 percent
• Indianapolis, 5.4 percent
• Cleveland, 5.6 percent
• Virginia Beach, Va.. 5.6 percent
• Kansas City, Mo., 5.9 percent
• Columbus, Ohio 6.3 percent
• Nashville, Tenn. 6.7 percent
• Milwaukee, 6.8 percent

Once again, my man Clyde hits it on the nose:

As a footnote, in the endless debate over immigration, you could cite the MacArthur program as evidence that the United States, for all its troubles, remains the place where many of the world’s brightest want to be. This year’s winners, all of whom must be citizens or residents of this country, include people originally from Nigeria, Russia, Croatia, Egypt, Tanzania, England and Canada.

... Nearly all the New York [MacArthur] winners ... came here from somewhere else.

so what?
So, this won't prevent a decline in Manhattan real estate values -- if that is what general and local economic trends have in store for us -- but these related factor do provide some additional (unique?) layer of insulation from the otherwise cold that our market may feel. Call me Pollyanna if you like (so long as you call).

Sep. 25, 2008 - NYC photos / could not stop scrolling

is it memory lane if I am too young to remember (or to have been alive then)?
Hat tip to today's Today's MUG from Manhattan User's Guide for linking to a forum on WiredNY with an amazing collection of photos, mostly of Manhattan, mostly black and white, some more than a hundred years old. Once I started scrolling, I kept thinking, only a few more, then I will get back to work.... But I scrolled through the whole thing in one sitting.

one Manhattan loft angle
I am sure that many pictures could front stories about Manhattan lofts (especially the Broadway shots), but the one that immediately caught my eye with a Manhattan Loft Guy angle is the 10th one down, "Tiffany's Union Square" from 1899. That is the building now marketed as 15 Union Square West, which I touched on in a very early post: July 7, 2006: dynamic city / time runs out on a stripped Tiffany's.

condo inevitability, indeed
But I was wrong about "the inevitable condo": the structure hasn't been torn down for condo development, but stripped to its 130 year old cast-iron skeleton and reclad in glass over the cast-iron  (and gut renovated, of course), with another 6 stories built on top.  http://www.15usw.com/

Enjoy the photos ... see if you can pull away before scrolling through them all.
 

Sep. 11, 2008 - September 11, again

I will re-post what I said on this date two years ago, slightly updated:

Dec. 20, 2007 - NYC Housing Stock / distribution of renters + owners, coops, condos, houses

THX to REBNY for sending along a pie chart from the US Census Bureau 2005 Housing Survey of the distribution of housing types in the City as a whole (beggars would want to see Manhattan only, but we can't be choosers here).

Couple of interesting things, at first blush. REBNY highlighted the fact that 67% of the City's housing units are rental units, while another 21% are "conventional homes". City-wide, there are only 76,060 condo units and 309,195 coop apartments, a 1:4 ratio. With 3.1 million households, the average household size is less than 2.7 people -- I suspect that number is well below the national average.

Interesting stuff.

(C) Sandy Mattingly 2007

Nov. 14, 2007 - 176 Perry has new loft in mid-8 figures

Jul. 24, 2007 - Gilsey House ancient history (circa 1980)

Jul. 14, 2007 - R.I.P.

Nov. 30, 2006 - Manhattan Users Guide on Nannyhattan

Nov. 27, 2006 - isn’t Williamsburg enough? / cities competing for hipsters

Oct. 31, 2006 - Curbed means never having to say you're sorry

Oct. 30, 2006 - where the (wild?) things are / the distribution of the ‘creative class’

Oct. 17, 2006 - do loft owners have cars? / beating parking tickets

Sep. 25, 2006 - unique strengths in the Manhattan real estate market – not just an urban myth?

Sep. 11, 2006 - September 11 / 343 firefighters

Sep. 10, 2006 - September 11 – read the names