7 ms·

NYC Active Major Construction

77 points by apsec112 7y ago

asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
Considering the NY-Newark metro area has ~18M people, 120k proposed housing units (at ~2.5 persons per household) is about a 1% increase above the base rate of housing, assuming no vacancies and one household per unit. Considering the already astronomical price of housing in the area, it's hard to imagine that this is really going to move the needle. If we were serious about reducing housing cost, you'd see 3-5x the number of proposed units as you do, or more.
- thedance 7y ago
  The historical (before 1980) rate of housing starts in American cities was 1 per 100 people per year, not per 100 households.
- volkl48 7y ago
  You are comparing the entire metro area population to housing units under construction only within the NYC city limits (and the population within NYC city limits is ~8.4 million). I agree there needs to be a far faster rate of housing development if you want to see housing cost reductions, I just don't think the comparison you're drawing makes much sense. There is substantial (if also insufficient) housing development going up in NJ, parts of NY outside the city limits, etc. The comparison needs to either include all of those units, or only compare against the NYC population instead of the metro population.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
    Good point. My apologies and thanks for the correction. I did not intend to mislead. So, the fraction of existing stock that is being developed is about 2% rather than 1%. Although, I don't know how many of these proposed units replace existing units, so perhaps the estimate was also too generous in the other direction.
  - badfrog 7y ago
    > There is substantial (if also insufficient) housing development going up in NJ Very much insufficient IMO. People are resisting a proposal to build a residential tower at the site of a current parking lot across the street from Journal Square PATH station. If people can't see the need to prioritize humans over cars at that location, we're in big trouble.
    - drngdds 7y ago
      Excuse me, but that parking lot is a historical landmark and a cornerstone of the community!
    - skizm 7y ago
      A large influx of units devalues similar homes in the same general location. People don't want their home price to drop. They may not have bought it specifically as an investment, but if you buy something for $500k and 10 years later it is worth $400k, you're not going to be happy. You might even go underwater on a mortgage because you only put 3% down for your first home. I'm not saying it's right, but I do understand why NIMBY syndrome exists. People would be fine with more housing, more skyscrapers, or whatever if their home price wasn't directly affected.
      - badfrog 7y ago
        That would be an understandable objection (though IMO extremely selfish and terrible). What people are actually saying is the exact opposite. Something along the lines of "If these apartments get built, the neighborhood will become more desirable for rich people and my rent will go up." That and all the usual complaints about "it will be harder to find parking", "the streets will become too congested", etc.
- asah 7y ago
  Broadly, 1% could be bad, or it could be helpful... it depends. NY-Newark is clearly the wrong metric, since the new housing website only covers NY. The comparable statistic is 8.4M for 2020: http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/new-york-city-population/ http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/new-york-city-pop... But I agree this isn't right either - you really want new commutable housing vs existing commutable housing, and that's obviously a lot bigger number on both sides of the equation, and because it affects multiple jurisdictions (NJ, CT, LI, etc) it would be a pain to gather properly... even assuming everyone could agree on "commutable" - for some, that means 20mins, for others 2hrs is fine sitting comfortably on LIRR, NJT or metro north; let alone capturing the impact of transfers, flaky vs reliable transit options, transit cost... I once commuted by LIRR: all fun and games until you're waiting for a train transfer outdoors in high wind in Feb, and then get to your car, which has thawed/refrozen and you need to excavate to even get in...) hope this helps, please be gentle.
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    > sitting comfortably on ... NJT In what alternate dimension does this NJT exist in? I'm not often "sitting comfortably" on anything operated by NJT. Some days I'm lucky to be sitting at all.
    - vertig0h 7y ago
      From experience, I recommend a good pair of noise cancelling headphones.
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  This is just a map of the housing construction in the five boroughs. Some suburbs are densifying around train stations and some are not, but New York City has no mechanism to make the suburbs densify.
- vanusa 7y ago
  If we were serious about reducing housing cost, you'd see 3-5x the number of proposed units as you do, or more. And your plan for achieving that number is - what precisely? There's a reason for the modest increases in unit counts these plans produce: In reality, they all end up being way harder to implement (and costing a lot more) than you or I would like to think they would.
  - maratd 7y ago
    > And your plan for achieving that number is - what precisely? Ease up on the zoning laws. Many zoning laws in that same metro area prohibit high density housing. The same high density housing that is most profitable and reduces the cost of housing.
    - vanusa 7y ago
      Ease up on the zoning laws. Sounds like a hunch, rather than a plan. I say that because while it sounds like that "ought to work" there's no evidence that (by itself) it will be sufficient to make a dent in the problem.
      - rayiner 7y ago
        It’s not just a hunch. There is a strong theoretical basis for why that will case prices to go down and supply to go up. And that theory is backed with actual evidence. Houston has more new home starts than the entire state of California, its housing prices are stable despite explosive population growth. Tokyo likewise has more housing starts than New York, LA, and Houston combined, and prices there are stable despite a growing population as people move into the city from the rest of Japan. The thing both places have in common is very streamlined zoning laws. Zoning proponents are like anti-vaxxers and climate changer deniers.
        selectodude 7y ago
        I will never wrap my head around the concept that building more housing won't help housing prices because apparently 7 billion people want to live in San Francisco or something.
- formercoder 7y ago
  There’s actually oversupply and prices are pretty good right now - relatively speaking of course.
  - vanusa 7y ago
    The first statement is completely false, of course. The second is simply vacuous.
    - __initbrian__ 7y ago
      While you’re right that there is not an oversupply(needs citation), it is interesting to note some Burroughs have seen a decrease in rent in the past few years. [0] (2018) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-12/pick-a-new-york-city-borough-rents-are-falling-there-and-fast https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-12/pick-a-ne...
      - vanusa 7y ago
        This point is that these dips in some neighborhoods a basically negligible against a backdrop of an overall affordability situation which is extremely bleak for most people who live in the city. And quite different from how things were 20 years ago or more. It's like -- okay, a 1BR in a reasonably accessible neighborhood now costs $2600 instead of $2700. What are we talking about here?
        formercoder 7y ago
        20+ years ago there was much more crime and living in the city was not desirable
        vanusa 7y ago
        I should have said "about 12 years or more." The tipping point for crime was around 1996-1997. After that, murders (while a bit higher) were much closer to current levels. After that there was about a 12 year period (until 2010) when rents weren't nearly as high as they are now -- around 40 percent lower across the board; and some neighborhoods have basically "flipped" and seen their median rents double. The point is, from around 1998-2010 the city was about as "desirable" as it is now -- but significantly more affordable. To get affordability back to those levels -- we'd have to see something like a 30 to 40 percent reduction throughout the system. It seems unlikely that would happen, even given the most ambitious upzoning, and the most wildly optimistic increases in inventory anyone could reasonably hope for.
- gniv 7y ago
  > you'd see 3-5x the number of proposed units as you do, or more. Why? I would think it depends on population growth, no? From what I hear [1] the population of NYC is actually shrinking (due to taxation and demographics). After seeing this number (127k units under construction) I'm actually optimistic that prices will drop medium term. [1] https://streeteasy.com/blog/nyc-population/ https://streeteasy.com/blog/nyc-population/
- tzone 7y ago
  High housing prices aren't simply matter of supply and demand though. At least not what would be considered expected/desirable demand. Large part of demand on NYC housing, is as investment units. Because of very favorable tenant laws, investment units don't even get rented out, because it isn't worth renting it out and dealing with the tenant laws. So there are a lot of units in Manhattan that are actually unoccupied. More than that, there are also new housing units that are clearly built to be sold more as investment units than as actual primary residencies. That is only one example of pretty complex dynamics. There are many other complex issues, including mortgage rates, more nuances about tenant laws and renting out apartments, extra costs associated with selling/buying houses and so on. It is a pretty complex situation. Another big part of the equation is that there are a lot of wealthy people who benefit from high housing prices that continue to increase, so it is very unlikely that things will change towards other direction any time soon.
ydnaclementine 7y ago
This map does not seem to cover road construction type things. I walk some road construction everyday and it's not on here.
- lbotos 7y ago
  I'm fairly certain that is because "Active Major Construction" is a specific classification, and it does not apply to road construction.
gok 7y ago
That's an interesting definition of "major". Some of these permits are for projects like a 59 square foot expansion [1] of a single family home. [1] http://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/JobsQueryByNumberServlet?passjobnumber=421888381 http://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/JobsQueryByNumberServlet?p...
gfiorav 7y ago
The map is made with www.carto.com, a pretty sweet mapping solution!
- mushufasa 7y ago
  it does look cool. i'm honestly more impressed by the overall look-and-feel and responsiveness of the dashboard. at first i thought it was shiny or Dash by plotly. does carto interop with or fork those??
rayiner 7y ago
Still not enough. Here is why Tokyo housing prices are stable, despite the city growing, while NYC’s continue to go up: https://reason.com/2019/04/02/nimbys-argue-new-housing-supply-doesnt-m/ https://reason.com/2019/04/02/nimbys-argue-new-housing-suppl... > According to the Journal, the Japanese capital of nearly some 13 million people saw the construction of 145,000 new housing units started in 2018—more than New York City, Los Angeles, Houston, and Boston combined. The country as a whole has managed to add close to the same amount of new housing as the U.S., despite having about half the population. What’s remarkable about that last point is that Japan has been shrinking for a few years now, while the US continues to grow.
- pkaye 7y ago
  Japanese homes are only kept for 20-30 years from what I read. Do the above statistics include homes that are demolished and rebuilt?
  - rayiner 7y ago
    I don’t know if that’s really accurate for Tokyo. It’s mostly concrete and steel construction, like any other major city.

77 points by apsec112 7y ago

Considering the NY-Newark metro area has ~18M people, 120k proposed housing units (at ~2.5 persons per household) is about a 1% increase above the base rate of housing, assuming no vacancies and one household per unit. Considering the already astronomical price of housing in the area, it's hard to imagine that this is really going to move the needle. If we were serious about reducing housing cost, you'd see 3-5x the number of proposed units as you do, or more.

thedance 7y ago
The historical (before 1980) rate of housing starts in American cities was 1 per 100 people per year, not per 100 households.
volkl48 7y ago
You are comparing the entire metro area population to housing units under construction only within the NYC city limits (and the population within NYC city limits is ~8.4 million). I agree there needs to be a far faster rate of housing development if you want to see housing cost reductions, I just don't think the comparison you're drawing makes much sense. There is substantial (if also insufficient) housing development going up in NJ, parts of NY outside the city limits, etc. The comparison needs to either include all of those units, or only compare against the NYC population instead of the metro population.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  Good point. My apologies and thanks for the correction. I did not intend to mislead. So, the fraction of existing stock that is being developed is about 2% rather than 1%. Although, I don't know how many of these proposed units replace existing units, so perhaps the estimate was also too generous in the other direction.
- badfrog 7y ago
  > There is substantial (if also insufficient) housing development going up in NJ Very much insufficient IMO. People are resisting a proposal to build a residential tower at the site of a current parking lot across the street from Journal Square PATH station. If people can't see the need to prioritize humans over cars at that location, we're in big trouble.
  - drngdds 7y ago
    Excuse me, but that parking lot is a historical landmark and a cornerstone of the community!
  - skizm 7y ago
    A large influx of units devalues similar homes in the same general location. People don't want their home price to drop. They may not have bought it specifically as an investment, but if you buy something for $500k and 10 years later it is worth $400k, you're not going to be happy. You might even go underwater on a mortgage because you only put 3% down for your first home. I'm not saying it's right, but I do understand why NIMBY syndrome exists. People would be fine with more housing, more skyscrapers, or whatever if their home price wasn't directly affected.
    - badfrog 7y ago
      That would be an understandable objection (though IMO extremely selfish and terrible). What people are actually saying is the exact opposite. Something along the lines of "If these apartments get built, the neighborhood will become more desirable for rich people and my rent will go up." That and all the usual complaints about "it will be harder to find parking", "the streets will become too congested", etc.
asah 7y ago
Broadly, 1% could be bad, or it could be helpful... it depends. NY-Newark is clearly the wrong metric, since the new housing website only covers NY. The comparable statistic is 8.4M for 2020: http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/new-york-city-population/ http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/new-york-city-pop... But I agree this isn't right either - you really want new commutable housing vs existing commutable housing, and that's obviously a lot bigger number on both sides of the equation, and because it affects multiple jurisdictions (NJ, CT, LI, etc) it would be a pain to gather properly... even assuming everyone could agree on "commutable" - for some, that means 20mins, for others 2hrs is fine sitting comfortably on LIRR, NJT or metro north; let alone capturing the impact of transfers, flaky vs reliable transit options, transit cost... I once commuted by LIRR: all fun and games until you're waiting for a train transfer outdoors in high wind in Feb, and then get to your car, which has thawed/refrozen and you need to excavate to even get in...) hope this helps, please be gentle.
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  > sitting comfortably on ... NJT In what alternate dimension does this NJT exist in? I'm not often "sitting comfortably" on anything operated by NJT. Some days I'm lucky to be sitting at all.
  - vertig0h 7y ago
    From experience, I recommend a good pair of noise cancelling headphones.
bobthepanda 7y ago
This is just a map of the housing construction in the five boroughs. Some suburbs are densifying around train stations and some are not, but New York City has no mechanism to make the suburbs densify.
vanusa 7y ago
If we were serious about reducing housing cost, you'd see 3-5x the number of proposed units as you do, or more. And your plan for achieving that number is - what precisely? There's a reason for the modest increases in unit counts these plans produce: In reality, they all end up being way harder to implement (and costing a lot more) than you or I would like to think they would.
- maratd 7y ago
  > And your plan for achieving that number is - what precisely? Ease up on the zoning laws. Many zoning laws in that same metro area prohibit high density housing. The same high density housing that is most profitable and reduces the cost of housing.
  - vanusa 7y ago
    Ease up on the zoning laws. Sounds like a hunch, rather than a plan. I say that because while it sounds like that "ought to work" there's no evidence that (by itself) it will be sufficient to make a dent in the problem.
    - rayiner 7y ago
      It’s not just a hunch. There is a strong theoretical basis for why that will case prices to go down and supply to go up. And that theory is backed with actual evidence. Houston has more new home starts than the entire state of California, its housing prices are stable despite explosive population growth. Tokyo likewise has more housing starts than New York, LA, and Houston combined, and prices there are stable despite a growing population as people move into the city from the rest of Japan. The thing both places have in common is very streamlined zoning laws. Zoning proponents are like anti-vaxxers and climate changer deniers.
      - selectodude 7y ago
        I will never wrap my head around the concept that building more housing won't help housing prices because apparently 7 billion people want to live in San Francisco or something.
formercoder 7y ago
There’s actually oversupply and prices are pretty good right now - relatively speaking of course.
- vanusa 7y ago
  The first statement is completely false, of course. The second is simply vacuous.
  - __initbrian__ 7y ago
    While you’re right that there is not an oversupply(needs citation), it is interesting to note some Burroughs have seen a decrease in rent in the past few years. [0] (2018) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-12/pick-a-new-york-city-borough-rents-are-falling-there-and-fast https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-12/pick-a-ne...
    - vanusa 7y ago
      This point is that these dips in some neighborhoods a basically negligible against a backdrop of an overall affordability situation which is extremely bleak for most people who live in the city. And quite different from how things were 20 years ago or more. It's like -- okay, a 1BR in a reasonably accessible neighborhood now costs $2600 instead of $2700. What are we talking about here?
      - formercoder 7y ago
        20+ years ago there was much more crime and living in the city was not desirable
        vanusa 7y ago
        I should have said "about 12 years or more." The tipping point for crime was around 1996-1997. After that, murders (while a bit higher) were much closer to current levels. After that there was about a 12 year period (until 2010) when rents weren't nearly as high as they are now -- around 40 percent lower across the board; and some neighborhoods have basically "flipped" and seen their median rents double. The point is, from around 1998-2010 the city was about as "desirable" as it is now -- but significantly more affordable. To get affordability back to those levels -- we'd have to see something like a 30 to 40 percent reduction throughout the system. It seems unlikely that would happen, even given the most ambitious upzoning, and the most wildly optimistic increases in inventory anyone could reasonably hope for.
gniv 7y ago
> you'd see 3-5x the number of proposed units as you do, or more. Why? I would think it depends on population growth, no? From what I hear [1] the population of NYC is actually shrinking (due to taxation and demographics). After seeing this number (127k units under construction) I'm actually optimistic that prices will drop medium term. [1] https://streeteasy.com/blog/nyc-population/ https://streeteasy.com/blog/nyc-population/
tzone 7y ago
High housing prices aren't simply matter of supply and demand though. At least not what would be considered expected/desirable demand. Large part of demand on NYC housing, is as investment units. Because of very favorable tenant laws, investment units don't even get rented out, because it isn't worth renting it out and dealing with the tenant laws. So there are a lot of units in Manhattan that are actually unoccupied. More than that, there are also new housing units that are clearly built to be sold more as investment units than as actual primary residencies. That is only one example of pretty complex dynamics. There are many other complex issues, including mortgage rates, more nuances about tenant laws and renting out apartments, extra costs associated with selling/buying houses and so on. It is a pretty complex situation. Another big part of the equation is that there are a lot of wealthy people who benefit from high housing prices that continue to increase, so it is very unlikely that things will change towards other direction any time soon.

ydnaclementine 7y ago

This map does not seem to cover road construction type things. I walk some road construction everyday and it's not on here.

lbotos 7y ago
I'm fairly certain that is because "Active Major Construction" is a specific classification, and it does not apply to road construction.

gok 7y ago

That's an interesting definition of "major". Some of these permits are for projects like a 59 square foot expansion [1] of a single family home. [1] http://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/JobsQueryByNumberServlet?passjobnumber=421888381 http://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/JobsQueryByNumberServlet?p...

gfiorav 7y ago

The map is made with www.carto.com, a pretty sweet mapping solution!

mushufasa 7y ago
it does look cool. i'm honestly more impressed by the overall look-and-feel and responsiveness of the dashboard. at first i thought it was shiny or Dash by plotly. does carto interop with or fork those??

rayiner 7y ago

Still not enough. Here is why Tokyo housing prices are stable, despite the city growing, while NYC’s continue to go up: https://reason.com/2019/04/02/nimbys-argue-new-housing-supply-doesnt-m/ https://reason.com/2019/04/02/nimbys-argue-new-housing-suppl... > According to the Journal, the Japanese capital of nearly some 13 million people saw the construction of 145,000 new housing units started in 2018—more than New York City, Los Angeles, Houston, and Boston combined. The country as a whole has managed to add close to the same amount of new housing as the U.S., despite having about half the population. What’s remarkable about that last point is that Japan has been shrinking for a few years now, while the US continues to grow.

pkaye 7y ago
Japanese homes are only kept for 20-30 years from what I read. Do the above statistics include homes that are demolished and rebuilt?
- rayiner 7y ago
  I don’t know if that’s really accurate for Tokyo. It’s mostly concrete and steel construction, like any other major city.