Brooklyn, NY – It is not an uncommon sight in Brooklyn to see a new luxury condominium building empty, except for the security guard. There are currently hundreds on the market that remain vacant.
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Then there are hundreds more being built.
“A recent study shows 5,200 luxury apartments are set to hit the market by 2010,” explained David Amsden, contributing editor for New York Magazine. “So what’s going to happen to those apartments is a big question on a lot of people’s minds right now.”
The question is especially nagging for developers who started constructing high-end condominium buildings when the real estate market was at its height. Then the economy slowed down, financing fell through, construction loans disappeared.
Some projects cannot be completed. Many that are done cannot get the buyers.
“They were building apartments for people priced out of Manhattan, someone who wanted to live in a luxury loft in TriBeCa, but couldn’t afford $2 million, so they’d come out here and spend $750,000 and right now that market has just evaporated.”
Developers are looking to sell their condos as soon as possible and so they’re offering plenty of incentives.
On the Williamsburg waterfront, Northside Piers will absorb a buyer’s mortgage payments for an entire year, as well as the common charges and real estate taxes. At 150 Berry Street, there are open houses every Saturday and Sunday, a mortgage broker on site, and the developer has cut prices about 15 percent to sell the last seven of the 40 units here.
“We’ve of course lowered the price to be more competitive,” said Mike Morton, owner of development company the Morton Group. “We’ve offered no closing costs.”
The problem is not unique to Williamsburg, luxury condos sitting empty are found throughout the borough. This one is in Clinton Hill. Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries did a study and found that 66 buildings in his district alone are either under construction, partially vacant or completely vacant.
“We have an opportunity in the midst of this recession, with all of these luxury condominium buildings, to be able to do something to address the affordable housing crisis,” Jeffries said.
Jeffries has launched an initiative called Project Reclaim to provide tax breaks and re-financing options for developers to turn their apartments into rentals for the working middle class. Jeffries has a meeting scheduled with state housing finance agency officials later this week to work on the details, in hopes of making these neighborhoods habitable.
We have similar problems here in the Bronx. Developers misjudged the market, and are left with huge numbers of unsold condominiums in mostly-empty buildings.
well, i guess prices will come down
This “affordable housing” garbage is just the usual self-serving politicians looking to get attention by “doing something for the people”. We don’t need tax breaks for developers to make this housing affordable – THE MARKET IS ALREADY DOING IT AUTOMATICALLY. Prices are coming down. That makes the housing more affordable. If no one can afford it yet, the prices will keep coming down. If the government steps in and forces it to be artificially more affordable, that will simply make OTHER housing MORE EXPENSIVE.
These are very very very basic economic laws.
Does this mean the end too the homeless era?
yet in the frum communities they still rip off the tenants with outrageous rents that tenants can not afford to pay only the ones who have section 8 its a disgrace.
ur just a sore loser
This people are in the wrong area they should build in willy or BP half the size and half nice and will still sell for whatever they want…. Its crazy time to stop this… There is other great and nice places to move to
why cant a bunch of frum chevra band together and buy up a huge condo
normal prices???
Not that every smart aleck has to be responded to, but just a little common sense.
When a developer buys a piece of property and tries to build a bldg, he has to make profit in order for the project to be succesful. If that is not acheived either by cost of construction or by other incentives, tax wise or whatever, the project does not make sene to be built. So if the prices come down, projects won’t be developed and whatever is out there will only go up, because of supply and demand. If you want to move to other places, you certainly can, but understand that you’ll also be having to find a job locally, which if there are any, you’ll be paid a lot less. Or in the alternative you’ll have to commute to wherever that job may be, and spent the time and money to get there so you’ve just lost whatever benefit you have in moving someplace else. So to the geniouss’ out here who claim that the market is adjusting by itself, think what you’re saying. A developer needs all the help he can get in todays environment be it from the banks or tax incentives or energy or pricing. Without that you will end up sooner or later paying more for whatever already exists.
According to a Department of Buildings count there are 362 stalled construction sites in the five boroughs, and surprise, they’re not all in Williamsburg