lictalk.com

A thousand reasons to love Long Island City. Tips: Editor@LICtalk.com

You are here: Home / Archives for Real Estate

Real Estate

A CHANGE IN DIRECTION – APARTMENT PRICES TO FALL IN 2016

by 12 Comments

A whopper going up on West Street in Greenpoint. One of many going up on the waterfront just south of us
A whopper going up on West Street in Greenpoint. One of many being built on the waterfront just south of us.

Apartment prices are heading down soon, there’s simply too much supply coming on.  Not only in LIC, but citywide – a gaze across the river confirms that the cranes aren’t just in Court Square and Queens Plaza.  A good analogy would be the recent drop in crude oil prices.  All those drilling rigs cracking open shale, led to a glut.  In the latter stages, a lot of cheap debt and high priced equity fueled even more drilling, until it tipped the balance.

We have the same in NYC – a hunt for yield has led investors worldwide to invest here, both by lending money to developers and acting as silent partners on the equity side ((and agreeing to very generous ‘promotes’ to the developers)).  So many of the new towers and other projects are being built using Other Peoples Money (OPM), which in the 21st century is the last stage of a real estate bull market.  The good news is that the percentage drops from today’s peak apartment prices, will not be nearly as drastic as oil’s.

More importantly, while we expect softness in the rest of the city, sales inventory in LIC [Read more…] about A CHANGE IN DIRECTION – APARTMENT PRICES TO FALL IN 2016

MASSIVE DEVELOPMENT WITH FOOTBRIDGE TO CORNELL TECHNION PROPOSED FOR LIC WATERFRONT

by 3 Comments

Maiella: delicious food, fantastic service, and the setting...
Maiella: delicious food, fantastic service, and the setting…

A huge development with something for everyone including a pedestrian bridge to Roosevelt Island, is being proposed by a group of investors according to POLITICO New York.

The site is on [Read more…] about MASSIVE DEVELOPMENT WITH FOOTBRIDGE TO CORNELL TECHNION PROPOSED FOR LIC WATERFRONT

LIC TO GET HOMELESS SHELTER AND STARBUCKS?

by 14 Comments

Ahh summer, when the kale is as high as a young lady's thigh. In Queens anyway
Summer, when the kale is as high as a young lady’s thigh – in Queens no less!

The Court Square Blog has uncovered permits for the lot at 21-16 44th Drive that link to a developer named Alan Lapes who’s made a very profitable living operating homeless shelters for NYC.  Though it’s only slated to be 29 units and 44th Drive has a bit of a gritty feel to it, I’m sure the 75 condo owners in The Industry across the street are [Read more…] about LIC TO GET HOMELESS SHELTER AND STARBUCKS?

GROWTH AT WHAT PRICE?

by 9 Comments

Maybe we think before doing when it comes to Queens?
Maybe we think before doing when it comes to Queens?

For more than a century, California has been the state where people flocked for a better life — 164,000 square miles of mountains, farmland and coastline, shimmering with ambition and dreams, money and beauty. It was the cutting-edge symbol of possibility: Hollywood, Silicon Valley, aerospace, agriculture and vineyards.

But now a punishing drought — and the unprecedented measures the state announced last week to compel people to reduce water consumption — is forcing a reconsideration of whether the aspiration of untrammeled growth that has for so long been this state’s driving engine has run against the limits of nature.

– The New York Times April 4, 2015

Recent travails with the 7-train and school-gate lead me to ask: should everyone be living here?  In a reversal of the entropic forces that overcome an abandoned jungle city, have we instead built over every square inch and then gone, and continue to go, too far upwards?  Most importantly, does densification diminish the quality of life for all?

Probably not if you’re taking the seaplane to your 20-acre spread in the Hamptons every weekend and living in a 5,000 square foot apartment or townhouse Monday to Friday.  As for the rest of us, I will posit that the answer is ‘yes.’  Because as exciting as it is to live in a city that never sleeps, at some point the reality of [Read more…] about GROWTH AT WHAT PRICE?