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
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Nov. 14, 2007 - 176 Perry has new loft in mid-8 figures
just for sh*ts and giggles
I am not going to go into too many details here, but the new listing for #8-9-10 at 176 Perry Street sorta jumped out and bit me today : "11,000 sq ft" triplex, with taxes and common charges of $32,047/mo. They are asking $40,000,000.
Note that that is not a circular stair but a "swirling" stair. Works for me. Pictures look sweet (d'oh).
(C) Sandy Mattingly 2007
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Jul. 24, 2007 - Gilsey House ancient history (circa 1980)
I have talked a bit about the lofts at The Gilsey House, 1200 Broadway, the beautiful Baroque former hotel at the corner of 29th Street, here, here and here.
I recently stumbled across an ancient-in–loft-years reference to this building in a January 22, 1980 NY Times article about non-traditional apartments. (The article is hidden behind the Times Select pay-for-search wall.)
$38,000 in 1979 dollars is …?
The article describes the Gilsey House lofts as having been sold as raw space by the sponsor in 1979 for prices ranging from $28k to $85k. One photographer bought 2,000 sq ft of raw space which he renovated himself for $38k (not clear from the article if that included purchase price). As it happened, that photographer is still a resident of the Gilsey House (at least I found him at the address in WhitePages.com; I won’t ‘out’ him here by name).
That is a long time in one building!
© Sandy Mattingly 2007
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Nov. 30, 2006 - Manhattan Users Guide on Nannyhattan
Depending on how you feel about protecting your In-Box, you should subscribe to Manhattan User’s Guide or just bookmark it and search regularly. Charlie Suisman has a lot of energy, a wide range of tastes and interests, and a virtually encyclopedic site. Troll the archives!
I won’t spoil the punch line of yesterday’s Article of the Day (Nannyhattan) but will note that he quotes the late lamented Betty Comden to great effect in ruing Manhattan being neutered.
© Sandy Mattingly 2006
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Nov. 27, 2006 - isn’t Williamsburg enough? / cities competing for hipsters
locking in 25-34 year-olds turns out to be important (maybe)
The demographic driver is yet another Boomer-generated problem:
Baby boomers are retiring and the number of young adults is declining. By 2012, the work force will be losing more than two workers for every one it gains.
Reporter Shaila Dewan talks about cities that are actively trying to ‘recruit’ this age cohort (such as Portland, Oregon, Lansing, Michigan and Memphis), while noting that it is hard to create a marketing campaign that could work.
“What we’re seeing is the jury of the most skeptical age group in America has looked at Atlanta’s character and likes it,” Sam A. Williams, the president of the [Atlanta] Chamber of Commerce, said.
But Mr. Williams acknowledged the difficulty of replicating that phenomenon on purpose.
Had the chamber tried to advertise Atlanta, he said, “we might have screwed it up —because they’re much more trusting of their own network than they are of any marketing campaign.”
Atlanta paid for the study; they win
Atlanta commissioned a study of 1990 – 2000 census data, which showed that the biggest gainers in this cohort were Atlanta, Denver, San Francisco, Portland O and Austin. The biggest losers may surprise you: Washington, Philadelphia, Los Angeles (!) and New York (!!).
One could argue that these data are too old to be useful, as the characteristics of such a small age cohort changes over time. One could argue that trying to chase generational fashion is doomed to fail. One could argue almost anything, I suppose.
Studies like Atlanta’s are common these days. From Milwaukee to TampaBay, consultants have been hired to score such nebulous indexes as “social capital,” “after hours” and “vitality.” Relocation videos have begun to feature dreadlocks and mosh pits instead of sunsets and duck ponds. In the governor’s race in Michigan this fall, the candidates repeatedly sparred over how best to combat “brain drain.”
The data are probably easy to misinterpret, making it difficult to “try” to appeal to this cohort.
At the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce, Tony Crumbley, the vice president for research, said the city and state had done a lot of things right without realizing it, like establishing liberal banking laws that made Charlotte a financial capital, and redeveloping downtown in the 1980s.
“Another thing,” Mr. Crumbley said, “there are more Frisbee golf courses in this area than any other place in the country.”
Still, what works in one city will not work in others, Mr. Cortright said, and not all young people are looking for the same things. He cites Portland’s bike paths, which many point to as an amenity that has helped the city attract young people.
“I think that confuses a result with a cause,” Mr. Cortright said. Portland happened to have a group who wanted concessions for cyclists and was able to get them, he said.
“The real issue was, is your city open to a set of ideas from young people, and their wish to realize their dream or objective in your city,” he said. “You could go out and build bike paths, but if that’s not what your young people want, it’s not going to work.”
hope for Manhattan?
But there is hope for New York (of course).
They are people who, demographers say, are likely to choose a location before finding a job. They like downtown living, public transportation and plenty of entertainment options. They view diversity and tolerance as marks of sophistication.
Let’s see… downtown living (whatever that is), check; public transportation, check; entertainment options, check; diversity and tolerance, (a hopeful) check.
But, if it comes down to affordability (d’oh) all the checks in the world may not help Manhattan.
© Sandy Mattingly 2006
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Oct. 31, 2006 - Curbed means never having to say you're sorry
Curbed.com is at the top of the New York City blogosphere. Among its strengths is that it goes all over the place in content and breadth. And it certainly is an ... ummm ... unfiltered medium, as the occasional lewd threads are tolerated (presumably) as self-policing (or self-deleting) community generated content.
The editorial tone is wry, sharp and iconoclastic on a good day, and usually merely snarky on a bad day. But yesterday was a particularly bad day for Curbed, and I have been waiting for somebody on the Curbed Team to acknowledge that -- perhaps Joey the Author or Lock the Man. Still waiting.
They took a bizarre news bite (1990s Haitian strong man found to be Queens real estate agent) and went WAY over the top. Three or four civilians have chimed in to chide Curbed, and so far the only response has been more wiseass from Joey the Author. Nothing from Lock the Man.
I realize they have an image to maintain, but I wonder if they realize that they have an image to maintain. This ain't the PC police calling, but why can't they acknowledge even the slightest regret over a "joke" that went too far??
© Sandy Mattingly 2006
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Oct. 30, 2006 - where the (wild?) things are / the distribution of the ‘creative class’
Gothamist created a lovely map from 2000 census data reflecting the residence of people who claim to be in the arts, design, entertainment and sports businesses (sports?), which make up what urban theorist Richard Florida describes as the “creative class” (sports??). 150,000 New York City residents identified themselves in these groups, making up 4.3% of thee City’s total work force. (Enlarge the map by clicking on “This map”.) (THX to Curbed for the head’s up.)
The map’s largest increment is “greater than 20%”, and the purple goes to….
SoHo
Greenwich Village
Tribeca
DUMBO
Chelsea
the Financial District
Williamsburg and
Long IslandCity (Long IslandCity?)
loft nabes score
This list is your basic who’s who of loft neighborhoods. Interesting that LIC made the group at the top of the list, which perhaps is an indication that this nabe really is poised to become the next hip loft area.
Gothamist was a little surprised that the EastVillage did not make this concentration level, and did not even match the Upper West Side.
a personal anomaly
Not me. I was surprised by those few blocks around 58th and Park. Who lives over there??
© Sandy Mattingly 2006
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Oct. 17, 2006 - do loft owners have cars? / beating parking tickets
Coincidence? You decide
Two pieces by very different media came across my desk today, with no reference to each other. Is October the unofficial New York City Parking Ticket Month?
The NY Post today has a piece about a new book to come out by a former traffic judge that advises you to “fight every ticket” and to bring documents, but leave the ticket at home.
© Sandy Mattingly 2006
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Sep. 25, 2006 - unique strengths in the Manhattan real estate market – not just an urban myth?
“everyone” says the Manhattan real estate market is “different”, sometimes they are right
“New York, interestingly enough, showed large increases in per capita income both during the Internet boom and the Internet winter that followed”
Income-gain concentration is stark
The thrust of the piece was about how The National Income Inequality Story in the dot-com era was really not a “national;” story at all, but a very localized story. (I guess income, like real estate, is “local”). Two researchers at the University of Texas drilled down to county income data and found that (1) the late-1990s surge in “national” income inequality originated in a very small number of counties, and (2) these very few counties were heavily focused in information technologies.
How concentrated was this surge? If four out of the top five counties in growth in income inequality had experienced only average growth in income inequality, the “national” results would have been essentially flat. That’s FOUR out of 3100 counties.
US income-gain data driven by tech
How dependent on information technology were the top “disparate” counties? Four out of the top five were King County WA (home to Microsoft) and three counties in Silicon Valley (San Mateo, Santa Clara, San Francisco). The fifth county is actually the top county for income disparity in the US: New York, New York – also known as Manhattan.
So … small parts of the country made tons more money than the “average” during The Boom, and then the disparity shrunk with the Bust (what Hal Varian in the Times calls the “Internet winter” – nice locution!).
no internet winter in Manhattan (yet?)
But the boom did not turn to bust in Manhattan – in which income disparity continued to grow after 2000. (Not a lot of post-2000 data, however).
So … because the coop, condo and loft market in Manhattan is driven by money “at the top” (Manhattan residents “at the bottom” are disproportionately renters), the availability of so much money at the top is a rather unusual driver for Manhattan real estate compared to the nation as a whole – especially as that driver persisted in Manhattan after the trend reversed in the metro-Microsoft area and Silicon Valley.
Some data supports local happy-talk
So … it was nice to see some real data suggesting that (at least some of the time) (at least some of) the people who crow about Manhattan being “different” might be on to something. (“Bubble-proof” is another matter, of course.)
© Sandy Mattingly
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Sep. 11, 2006 - September 11 / 343 firefighters
Another powerful number from the World Trade Center on September 11.
343 New York City firefighters died on September 11, 2001. Think about that. Three hundred and forty-three.
How many cities in this country even have 343 firefighters??
© Sandy Mattingly 2006
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Sep. 10, 2006 - September 11 – read the names
It turns out that I am most definitely not able to post much of anything today, and still unable to read (let alone watch) what passes for media coverage of the fifth anniversary.
As this is a blog about Manhattan real estate, please reflect as you read the names on the many places around the globe these New Yorkers came from (or their families came from in an earlier generation). A terribly sad, terribly potent cross-section of the global village that is Manhattan.
Pray in whatever way makes sense to you … for the people, their families, the world.
Amen.
© Sandy Mattingly 2006
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on matters of interest to Manhattan coop or condo loft apartment dwellers, buyers, sellers, and others, especially about New York City real estate
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