Tag Archives: Residential construction

NYC’s Housing Supply

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The New York City Rent Guidelines Board (of which I am a member) released its 2017 Housing Supply Report. It has a lot of interesting data for housing nerds as well as those of us obsessed with NYC. Here is a taste:

  • There are a total of 3,217,521 units of housing.
  • 2,184,295 are rental units.
    • 848,721 are non-regulated rentals.
    • 1,335,574 are regulated rentals in one form or another (rent stabilized, rent controlled etc.)
  • 1,033,226 are owner units.
    • 116,134 are condos
    • 330,679 are coops
    • 586,413 are conventional homes.

Some other highlights include,

  • Permits for 16,269 new dwelling units were issued in NYC in 2016, a 71.2% decrease over the prior year and the first decrease since 2009.
  • There was a 31.3% decrease in the number of co-op or condo units accepted in 2016, to 282 plans containing 8,671 units.
  • The number of housing units newly receiving 421-a exemptions decreased 17.8% in 2016, to 4,493.
  • The number of housing units newly receiving J-51 abatements and exemptions decreased 22.5% in 2016, to 34,311.
  • The number of new housing units completed in 2016 increased 61.9% over the prior year, to 23,247.
  • Demolitions were down in 2016, decreasing by 2.0%, to 1,849 buildings.
  • City-sponsored residential construction spurred 23,408 new housing starts in FY 2016, 74% of which were rehabilitations.
  • The City-owned in rem housing stock declined 70.2% during FY 2016, to 125 units. (4)

For those who do not know the byzantine world of NYC housing policy, 421-a exemptions relate to new construction and J-51 abatements relate to renovation of existing construction. It is interesting to see how policy changes impact housing construction.

Any one year’s figures provide just a snapshot, so if you really want to get a sense of the big picture, you should check out the earlier reports too. For instance, last year’s report stated that there were permits for 56,528 new dwelling units in 2015, an increase of 176% from 2014.  This is way more than the long term trend. Permits for new dwelling units never got much higher than the low thirty thousand range but fell to a low as six thousand during the depths of the Great Recession.

When you realize that the 421-a tax abatement was set to expire at the end of 2015, this big jump in permits makes sense as developers filed a ton of permits to take advantage of the program while they could. It will be interesting to see how the new 421-a regime will impact permits for new construction going forward.

Vacant Land in NYC

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photo by Eric Fischer

NYC Comptroller Stringer has released an Audit Report on the Development of City-Owned Vacant Lots by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Stringer has  taken some cheap shots on Mayor DeBlasio’s housing plans before (here for instance). This report amounts to another one. The Audit Findings and Conclusion read,

Our audit found that the City owns over a thousand vacant lots that could be developed under existing urban renewal programs, but many of these lots have been allowed to languish and remain undeveloped for up to 50 years or longer.  While HPD contends that over the years it has disposed of most of the lots it has been responsible for, we found that as of September 18, 2015, HPD listed 1,131 vacant lots under its jurisdiction.  Further, we found that although HPD solicits developers to build on these properties, it has not established plans with realistic time schedules to actually transfer City-owned vacant properties to developers.

Pursuant to General Municipal Law § 502, HPD has devised urban renewal plans for areas that include its vacant properties.  However, we found that the projected schedules are often pushed to a later date and sometimes no date is specified at all, notwithstanding the fact that the law requires “a proposed time schedule for the effectuation of such plan.”  Accordingly, it appears that schedules with adequate procedures to enable the transfer of City-owned properties to developers in accordance with those schedules have not been consistently formulated.  Finally, we identified an additional 340 City-owned vacant lots under the jurisdiction of other City agencies that could be considered to be used for residential construction. (2)

Even the language of this summary reveals the Comptroller’s spin. It is laughable to say that the City has allowed vacant land “to languish and remain undeveloped  for up to 50 years or longer.” The fact is that the City took ownership of much of this land during the ’60s and ’70s because it was abandoned by the owners who did not pay their property taxes. Much of the land had absolutely no value for decades.

This has certainly changed in the last 20 years or so, so it is worth evaluating whether the City should be taking more aggressive steps to get this land developed. Certainly one would think that this Mayor would want to do just that. And indeed, the Comptroller’s report shows that the Mayor has slated over half of those parcels for development over the next few years. The City’s response to the Audit indicates that many of the remaining parcels pose development challenges for residential development.

My take (having written extensively about abandoned land in NYC, here for instance) is that Stringer is making a mountain out a molehill. Every mayor from Koch through De Blasio has attempted to develop or sell much of the vacant land owned by the City. This audit fails to demonstrate that the City has a serious problem on this count.

Friday’s Government Reports Round-Up

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