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There are a lot more residential buyers and renters than commercial renters. Take the crazy supertalls going up on 57th St right now - those homes are actually

There are a lot more residential buyers and renters than commercial renters. Take the crazy supertalls going up on 57th St right now - those homes are actually surprisingly hard to sell, and those buildings also take years to fill purely by virtue of the fact that the number of qualified/interested buyers in the world is so low you can fit them all in the same conference room. Commercial space is in high demand in Manhattan, but companies also have relatively narrow parameters in the spaces they're able to rent (company size, location, nearby facilities, etc), which limits the number of potential renters.

jgalt212 12y ago
> There are a lot more residential buyers and renters than commercial renters. That's my point. If this is the case, why do they keep building office buildings when the city actually needs apartment buildings?
- potatolicious 12y ago
  Because the space is needed. The speed at which a market moves is not a measure of its size nor its supply/demand balance. Commercial real estate vacancy rate in Manhattan right now is quite low compared to historical trends - don't let the stories of megatall commercial projects fool you. Cost per square foot has been rising steadily throughout Manhattan and is now actually quite high. New buildings always take a lot of time to fully lease out due to structural inefficiencies and the more constricted customer base - the Empire State Building wasn't profitable for decades after it opened. This doesn't mean that the office space isn't needed. There are a lot fewer commercial renters, but they occupy a lot more space for a lot more time. Your typical New Yorker isn't, for example, renting a 30,000 square foot space on a 10-year lease.