9 ms·
I'm no NIMBY but places like NYC will never be able to build enough to outpace demand.
by m_ke 4y ago
I'm no NIMBY but places like NYC will never be able to build enough to outpace demand.
- eloff 4y agoAnd yet it works in Tokyo, a city of almost double the population?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Zxian 4y agoNew York City already has a significantly higher population density than Tokyo (~11,300/km2 vs ~6,300/km). It's easier to develop more housing when you have more land.
- coryrc 4y agoYou need to include Newark, Yonkers, Long Island, etc if you want to compare those figures. Tokyo is 13400 sq km, NYC is 780 sq km. If I rounded Tokyo's land area to the same sig figs as I did for NYC, it would be lowered by half the total area that NYC takes up!
- timr 4y ago> You need to include Newark, Yonkers, Long Island, etc if you want to compare those figures. That's just not an accurate comparison. Live in NYC. Lived in Japan. The difference is transit. It is far easier to get to Saitama or Kawasaki or Yokohama or Chiba than it is to get to Long Island from NYC. You can do the former in an hour at rush hour. Try getting to downtown Manhattan from Bay Shore as a daily commute. You'll go mad. Here's Tokyo and New York at the same zoom level: Tokyo: https://www.google.com/maps/@35.736739,139.6246444,10z https://www.google.com/maps/@35.736739,139.6246444,10z NYC: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7983574,-73.948053,10z https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7983574,-73.948053,10z The gray area of Tokyo on that map is pretty much all considered an exurb of Tokyo, more-or-less feasible for daily commute by rail. Most of the NYC region is inaccessible from Manhattan, except by car. Look at the Seibu Shinjuku line, or the Chuo line on the Tokyo map -- both offer express trains that will take you from the distant western exurbs, right into the middle of downtown Tokyo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seibu_Shinjuku_Line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seibu_Shinjuku_Line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Line_(Rapid) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Line_(Rapid)
- coryrc 4y agoI understand, but that doesn't change my assertion that comparing Tokyo density to only-NYC density makes no sense, especially as an argument that there is no room for to build more. Hogwash! Half your NYC map is pure green, but even leaving that, most of the land area on that map that is housing is SFH. The density of the NYC MSA is 1/3 that of Tokyo: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area There's plenty of room to grow up. Just because the reason we don't is shitty government organization and FPTP voting doesn't mean we can just ignore the vast swaths of low-density just outside Manhattan 's borders.
- zamadatix 4y agoGreater Tokyo Area? Tokyo Metropolis? Previous Tokyo City limits? New York City metro area? New York City? Manhattan? These can be 2 orders of magnitude apart in scale but they've all been talked about like it was the same location A and location B. At the small scale Tokyo's densest ward is ~22,700/km^2 and Manhattan is ~28,800/km^2 with Manhattan being ~4x-5x the land area of the former (i.e. the core is a lot more dense). At the large scale the Greater Tokyo Area is ~2,900/km^2 and the New York Metropolitan Area is ~2,053/km^2 (i.e. the urban area around Tokyo is a lot more dense). "Tokyo" is a good example that you can get affordable housing by focusing on how to spread the population over a large urban area but it's not a good example building more housing downtown is a scalable approach.
- rr888 4y agoI'm not sure why you think Tokyo works, it wasn't long ago that it was multiple times the price of NYC. It might be affordable now but only because of a economic slump and Japan's falling population.
- ZoomerCretin 4y agoTokyo's population grew, actually.
- sixo 4y agoIncrementally, building improves living conditions. It's not all-or-nothing.
- j0hnyl 4y agoI think they can. The thing is the corporate landlords would rather have their high rises sit empty than rent the units at reasonable rates.
- suchow 4y agoDo you know what would motivate this behavior? Naively, any rent is more than zero rent, so why let a unit sit empty?
- kyawzazaw 4y agoIt keeps the market rate high for other units/properties.
- jallen_dot_dev 4y agoThat does not make sense from a game-theoretic standpoint. You would be helping other landlords at your own expense. It would be better to let other landlords make that sacrifice and rent our your own properties for as much as you can get.
- kyawzazaw 4y agothat's the thing. They are okay with helping other landlords because they themselves hold other multiple properties. There is more benefits by having the rates high than losing money on a few units. It totally makes sense for the rental property owners.
- PolCPP 4y agoIIRC Sometimes some of these units are tied to a mortgage. Renting it at a reasonable price could make the price of the unit to drop making the money lender wanting to renegotiate the mortgage contract.
- macksd 4y agoMy gut feeling is this doesn't entirely explain it, but any tenant is also more work than no tenant, so they may not want to do the work of signing a new lease and dealing with the work it will trigger for less than you're making per-head on your current tenants. There's probably also a fear that if you let a new tenant in for lower rent, this might lower the rent other people expect and the problem starts snowballing.
- runeks 4y agoWhy do you believe that?
- m0llusk 4y agoCannot speak for the poster, but the big current issue is that the value of residential units has gone from being strongly linked to wages to residences being an extremely valuable chip for playing financial games. Residences, especially inherently valuable ones like NYC apartments, have sufficient demand from financial game players that wage earners are barely able to keep up. Exactly how things break down is not clear, but there is this idea that demand for residences for financial purposes is competing aggressively with people who want homes.
- ch4s3 4y agoThis is a well studied idea, the percentage of units sitting empty is a round error in the total supply of housing. At the start of the pandemic there were a paltry 4000 vacant condos. For reference there are 2.3 million apartments in the city.
- thfuran 4y agoBut how many vacant apartments were there (or how many total condos)?
- ch4s3 4y agoThe vacancy rate of apartments is just at or under 4.5% which is considered a very tight rental market. I don't have the total condo numbers readily at hand.
- m0llusk 4y agoThat is not directly related. People and institutions holding residential units for investment purposes usually rent them out.
- 4y ago
- the_only_law 4y agoI thought there was a ton of empty housing in NYC, it's just insanely expensive.
- slama 4y agoThis isn't true - vacancy rates are below the healthy threshold https://citylimits.org/2022/05/17/nycs-latest-vacancy-survey-is-bad-news-for-affordable-apartment-seekers/ https://citylimits.org/2022/05/17/nycs-latest-vacancy-survey...
- mattwad 4y agoAll over NYC, there are empty buildings and apartments. There's space, but landlords are artificially reducing supply.
- refurb 4y agoRead up on rent control in the 70’s and landlord’s burning down their own buildings to collect insurance. Artificially forcing prices low just reduces supply. But no doubt NYC will head down that path. Seems like all major cities are repeating the policies of the 60’s-80’s that causes populations to drop.
- intrasight 4y agoFlashback to late 1970s driving through the Bronx with my family - an annual ritual as most of the extended family was still in the NYC area while we had moved to Rochester. We would pass blocks of empty high-rise apartments in the South Bronx. As a middle-middle-class suburban kid, I just couldn't conceive of how the wealthiest city on earth could have sections that looked like a bombed-out and evacuated European city following World War II. I asked my father what had happened here. He answer was "rent control".
- colinmhayes 4y agoNyc apartments are at 4% vacancy, a decent bit below the national average. This meme is just straight up false.