Predictions are hard. Especially about the future.
I’m not sure if Yogi Berra actually said that, but it’s particularly true for elected officials talking about real estate, a topic they think they understand but don’t.
State Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal said in November 2021 that the Soho/Noho rezoning would invite an influx of big-box stores. The rezoning was approved weeks later. Have you noticed any big-box stores opening in Soho and Noho?
City Comptroller Brad Lander managed to get the New York Times to publish his op-ed in 2020 saying the pandemic would trigger a wave of multifamily foreclosures, so the city should prepare to buy them on the cheap and turn them into social housing.
The wave of foreclosures didn’t happen, as people soon returned to the city and rents shot right back to where they had been, and then higher.
One comment that politicians and activists often make about a market-rate project that would be the first in a particular low-income area is that it will cause other towers to pop up like weeds, and before you know it, there goes the neighborhood!
On that note, consider the fate of the Jay Group’s 90-foot-tall, 183-unit apartment building at 2886 Atlantic Avenue in East New York, a neighborhood that most would-be gentrifiers cannot even find on a map. Permits were filed for the project in early 2022.
Fast forward to this 2025 headline about the project in City Limits:
“This Building Was Supposed to be Luxury Apartments. Now It Will House 183 Families From Homeless Shelters.”
Demand for one-bedrooms priced at $2,500 to $3,000 per month did not materialize, and the Jay Group had sold it to Camber Property Group and the Institute for Community Living.
Developers don’t control the future any more than politicians can predict it. They look to invest in areas with untapped demand and try to get a lender to sign on. Sometimes they guess wrong.
What we’re thinking about: Are the locals who feared gentrification in East New York happy that they got homeless people instead? Send thoughts to eengquist@therealdeal.com.
A thing we’ve learned: New York students in elementary, middle and high school will be taught personal finance beginning next year, the Albany Times Union reported. It’s a long-overdue reform that many other states have already made. Whether it will eventually reduce the number of adults overwhelmed by credit card debt or help more people qualify for a mortgage is anyone’s guess, but it was educational malpractice not to give them more tools to navigate their financial future.
Elsewhere…
A father called me from North Carolina, asking for a link to a TRD story about substantial rehabilitation as one of the last remaining ways to remove a building from rent stabilization. He was doing research for his son, who is in court trying to get a six-month lease for an SRO in an old hotel that the owner is trying to convert into market-rate rentals.
The property has just two SRO units left, down from 72, as many tenants accepted buyouts.
The conversation became heated when he called it an example of greed by real estate investors wiping out affordable housing. I said, Have you ever asked for a raise? Does that make you greedy?
The law allows for deregulation in certain circumstances, I said. If the developer can convince the court that he has a legal right to deny your son the lease, he may do so. If not, your son can move in. That’s why we have a court system.
The caller settled down and thanked me for the link (“How Greenbrook weathered the storm”).
Closing time
Residential: No filings on Veterans Day.
Commercial: No filings. See above!
New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $11.25 million for a pre-war co-op unit at 911 Park Avenue on the Upper East Side. Michael J. Franco, Miriam Richards and Greg Holzmann of Compass have the listing.
Breaking Ground: The largest new building permit filed was for a proposed 56,542-square-foot, 99-unit residential project at 3999 Carpenter Avenue in Wakefield. Nikolai Katz filed the permit on behalf of Steven Westreich of Westorchard Management.
— Matthew Elo
