Digestible Real Estate News

We’re recycling this piece to do a bit more for those genuinely interested in New York real estate, not just food porn, and to give my LinkedIn designation a little luster. Taking a note from the easy to absorb nuggets of information in MarketSnacks‘ newsletter (blanketed with this unshakable food theme), here’s your RealEstateSnacks so I can make this newsletter tax deductible.

1. While the decision about Amazon headquarters #2 won’t come until 2018, the battle is getting direly intense. Amazon has received 238 proposals from cities and regions across North America vying to host the company’s second headquarters. With the retailer investing more than $5 billion and creating up to 50,000 jobs in the lucky location of choice, the requirements for consideration were an area with a low cost of living, an educated and tech-savvy workforce, high incentives, at least 1 million people, and close access to an international airport. The neighborhoods NYC has in the running: Midtown West, the Financial District, Long Island City, and the Brooklyn Tech Triangle (the area encompassing DUMBO, the Brooklyn Navy Yards, and Downtown Brooklyn).

2. The future is now – the MTA is doing away with MTA cards. The MTA has announced that in 2018 they plan to roll out a contact-less payment system, activated by waving a cellphone or credit/debit card over a sensor. The city has seen it all: first little paper tickets that cost a nickel, then the nickel itself, then the dime, followed by the token, and, since the 1990s, there has been the MetroCard; recognizable, bendable, lose-able and not always reliable. Glass half full: less physical contact with surfaces in the MTA. Glass half empty: the government is going to be able to follow us wherever we go that much more.

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3. 5 years after Hurricane Sandy rolled through NYC, the city is measuring how we have, and haven’t, prepared ourselves for the next time we get hit. The city has enacted countless resiliency efforts – from flood protection, to breakwaters, to levees – which is even more important with potential rises in sea levels. Curbed released an article about the continued threat on coastal communities, where there have been concerted efforts placed but how much of them are truly impactful. Curbed is further keeping track of efforts against future threats while dealing with issues still unresolved.

4. ^The Women’s Only co-working space and social club, The Wing, opened it’s second location and it’s an instagram dream. The group’s first outpost opened its doors in the Flatiron District one year ago and now with a list of applicants numbering north of 8,000, they landed their second location in Soho. The new downtown home on the top floor of 52 Mercer further builds on the brand’s mission to “provide a home base for women on their way” by nearly tripling the square footage of the Flatiron club, which clocks in at about 10,000 square feet.