Digestible Real Estate News
We’re keeping this reoccurring piece to do a bit more for those genuinely interested in New York real estate, not just food porn, and 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 are your RealEstateSnacks so I can make this newsletter tax deductible.
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1. With Essex Crossing nearing competition of it’s initial stages, this New Development push keeps on marching down the Lower East Side. Three 200-year-old Federal Town Houses were demolished on Grand Street recently to make way for a 22-unit condo with an art gallery on the ground floor, following a recent topping-out of a ten story condo on Chrystie. Change is definitely a new constant in the Lower East Side/Chinatown, both good with a new microbrewery on the way and bad with some horrific unprecedented evictions happening. Clearly not everyone is thrilled about the booming development, as Essex Crossing has been getting egged recently.
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2. The Fix NYC Panel has suggested Congestion Pricing to pay for the absolutely pathetically crumbling New York Subway system. Both Curbed and the New York Times have reported on this, with the Panel claiming that congestion pricing could generate $810 million to $1.1 billion annually while reducing congestion by 8 to 13 percent. Congestion pricing asks drivers to pay a surcharge to enter certain heavily-trafficked zones, with personal vehicles being charged $11.52 to drive during peak hours, and trucks charged $25.34. You thought uber surcharges were bad now, just wait…
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3. So it’s no surprise how incredibly…crowded…every inch of New York is. Well to explain your L train that has gotten a bit more intimate recently, New York City’s population reached a record high of 8.6 million people last year. This is a 447,565-person increase from the 2010 census. Between 2010 and 2017, Brooklyn took in the most people with a population growth from 144,071 to 2,648,77. Overall growth in the five boroughs since 2010 has accounted for 95 percent of the population increase in the entire state.
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4. With the sweeping death of mom-and-pop stores, De Blasio is eyeing to enact a vacancy tax to keep greedy landlords in place. With Manhattan’s overall retail vacancy rate having doubled between 2012 and 2017, from 2.1 to 4.2 percent, the mayor is looking for a way to penalize landlords who are holding out for top-dollar rent and in turn are causing blight in the neighborhood. However the stores that initially decimated these mom-and-pop shops are now being eaten alive by Amazon and commercial landlords so there will be some karma served.
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*** GOVERNOR’S ISLAND REOPENS MAY 1 – with extended hours this year! (!!!)