Tag Archives: #NYChousing

Reiss on Foreign Buyers in NYC

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MainStreet.com quoted me in Foreign Buyers Driving Up Rental Prices Impacts New York Residents. The story opens,

Emir Bahadir, a native of Turkey, purchased two apartments in Manhattan for the purpose of renting them out. The 24-year-old paid a total of $9 million for the apartments in the West Village and Chelsea and earns some $40,000 a month in rental income.

”Entry into the real estate market in Manhattan by the foreign buyer has become easier because of technology,” Bahadir told MainStreet.

As a result, foreign buyers are increasingly coming into the Manhattan market and buying properties worth $2 to $5 million for the benefit of rental income. That can push rental prices higher for those on Main Street.

“[Foreign buyers] are not keeping them empty but filling them with tenants,” said Tamir Shemesh, a Realtor at the Corcoran Group. “A $2 million apartment can be rented out for as much as $8,500 a month, while a $3 million apartment can go for $11,000 to $12,000 a month.”

The tenants who can afford to pay thousands a month in rent are largely foreign as well.

“The reason we invest in real estate in New York is because of the exorbitant amount of rent that people are willing to pay,” Bahadir said. “That doesn’t happen anywhere else except in the U.K., but because of complications in the Middle East, London is not so popular these days.”

The downside for Americans is that escalating prices impact the overall rental market.

“It lets landlords know what the ceiling is and may encourage them to reach for it,” said David Reiss, professor with Brooklyn Law School.

Affordable Housing in the De Blasio Era

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Mayoral candidate de Blasio’s position on affordable housing policy can be found here. The key points include:

  • Require developers to build some affordable housing when they build in neighborhoods that have been upzoned (mandatory inclusionary zoning)

  • Direct $1 billion in city pension funds to affordable housing construction

  • Apply the same tax rate to big, vacant lots as applies to commercial properties and earmark the increased revenues for affordable housing

  • Ensure that affordable housing subsidies meet the needs of lower-income families and are distributed equitably throughout the City

As I had mentioned previously, NYU’s Furman Center (and its Moelis Institute for Affordable Housing Policy) ran a great series of ten conversations on the big housing issues facing New York City’s mayor. Since then, the Furman Center has posted ten policy briefs about those issues.The ten issues are

  1. Should the next mayor commit to build or rehabilitate more units of affordable housing than the Bloomberg Administration has financed?

  2. Should the next mayor require developers to permanently maintain the affordability of units developed with public subsidies?

  3. Should the next mayor adopt a mandatory inclusionary zoning program that requires developers to build or preserve affordable housing whenever they build market-rate housing?

  4. Should the next mayor seek to expand the use of city pension funds to develop affordable housing?

  5. Should the next mayor provide a rental subsidy for moderate- and middle-income households?

  6. Should the next mayor permit more distant transfers of unused development rights to support the development of affordable housing?

  7. Should the next mayor support the New York City Housing Authority’s plan to lease its undeveloped land for the construction of market-rate rental housing?

  8. Should the next mayor allow homeless families to move to the top of the waiting list for housing vouchers or public housing?

  9. Should the next mayor offer to cap the property tax levy on 421-a rental properties in order to preserve the affordable units within those buildings?

  10. How should the next mayor prioritize the preservation of existing affordable housing units?

Mayor-Elect de Blasio and his team will have to struggle with all of these issues. There are few easy answers in New York City when it comes to housing policy.

The Future of Affordable Housing in NYC

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Yesterday, NYU’s Furman Center started a great series, #NYChousing: 10 Issues for NYC’s Next Mayor:

Over each of the next 10 days, #NYChousing will release an issue brief that presents a housing policy question that will confront the next mayor of NYC. The #NYChousing briefs do not provide policy recommendations, but instead provide the background facts, point out potential trade-offs, and pose questions to be considered in order for the candidates and the public to make informed decisions about competing policy proposals.

The first two issues are:

1. HOUSING BUDGET:  Should the next mayor commit to build or rehabilitate more units of affordable housing than the Bloomberg Administration has financed?

2. PERMANENT AFFORDABILITY:  Should the next mayor require developers to permanently maintain the affordability of units developed with public subsidies?

There are Twitter chats about both of these issues, with eight more to come. Tomorrow’s topic is

3. MANDATORY INCLUSIONARY ZONING: Should the next mayor adopt a mandatory inclusionary zoning program that requires developers to build or preserve affordable housing whenever they build market-rate housing?

The Center provides the following guidance for its Twitter chat:

 Throughout the #NYChousing series, the Furman Center will host a series of Twitter chats to discuss each of these policy questions. Each one-hour Twitter chat will start at 11:00am ET and will focus on that day’s policy question. We encourage and welcome your participation.

What’s a Twitter chat? It’s an interactive Twitter conversation spanning a specific period of time. The Furman Center (@FurmanCenterNYU) will pose a handful questions about that day’s #NYChousing policy question. Participants will follow the conversation and tag their responses with the hashtag #NYChousing.

How do you participate? If there’s a question you want to answer or a point you want to make, simply chime in with your insight, a link to a blog post you’ve written-whatever you’d like to add to the conversation. There’s no pressure to follow along for the entire hour or to answer every single question. Be sure to include the hashtag–#NYChousing-in your response.

I will be giving my own two cents as this chat progresses.