Digestible Real Estate News
^ look at this stuff, isn’t it neat, how I would like a loft on Mercer Street
After I got 30+ texts on my birthday stating “I hope you have avocado toast today”, I had one of those “what have I become” moments, similar to when I was moving and found 15 costumes under my bed. To do a bit more for those genuinely interested in New York real estate, not just food porn, and give my Linked-in designation a little luster, here’s to balancing the scale. Tangentially, I admittedly am not as keen as I would like to be regarding the finance world – but please ask me about the Revolutionary War/to conduct an ad hoc social media background check – so one my best friends forwarded me MarketSnacks, which is an *awesome* simplification of what’s happening on Wall Street. Taking from that easy to absorb nugget of information blanketed with this unshakable food theme, here’s a few RealEstateSnacks so I can make this whole newsletter tax deductible.
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Curious where you fall in New York’s most and least affordable neighborhoods? – Renthop used data from April, May and June in conjunction to census stats to determine neighborhood affordability based off the median household income. The Upper East Side came in as the most affordable, with a median household income of $155,213, a median two-bedroom rent of $3,555 and only 27.48% of income required for rent. Lincoln Square clocked in as the least affordable, with 52.18% of income required for rent, a median two-bedroom rent of $5,232.50 and a median household income of $120,337.
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Wonder why it’s so expensive to live here? Because New York is actually the most expensive place in the world to build – The average cost of building in this city is $354 per square foot, beating out Zurich at $328. This high cost is largely attributed to labor and materials, as steel rings in at $2,359 per ton and the city is facing a skill shortage which is upping labor costs. Construction costs faced an all time high of $43 billion in 2016, and is expected to drop slightly to $42.1 billion in 2017 and $42.3 billion in 2018.
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On a similar note, Harlem Townhouse prices have apparently risen 171% since 2009 – In 2009, the price per square foot was $237; that’s now escalated to $642 with a neighborhood peak of $855 hit last year. While this pales in comparison to Manhattan, where the average ppsf is $1,838 and the concentrated downtown average is $3,294, the projected yearly growth of ppsf is slated to hover at 15% and with big changes in the future regarding rezoning, Harlem is on the fast track to catching up with Manhattan in the coming years.