THE NYC HOUSING MARKET
By Greg Healy of Sovereign Associates
There was and is very little that could be considered “good” about Covid. I won’t get into the myriad of things that were not good.
What I will get into is that Covid proved beyond any doubt that supply and demand, the basic tenants of business, can work in New York City Housing.
Why do I say this? Covid arrived in our city, and many many people left it, and what happened to rents? - they cratered. Not only that but as they fell just about every Owner paid the brokers to get the apartments rented, not the tenants. People who wanted to be here had lots of apartments to choose from, got great deals on rents, and landlords gave huge concessions on rents along with other perks and payment terms.
What happened after Covid? Everyone came back, but no significant amount of housing had been built to accommodate everyone and the problem was further worsened by the 2019 Housing Stability Act (which will be the subject of a future post) and well-intentioned but poorly thought-out increases in the housing support voucher market occurred. It is not a surprise that the rents skyrocketed.
I’ll leave off today with links to two recent studies. The first article is in Inman.com , documenting falling rents in markets that added supply. The second article from the National Multifamily Housing Council linked here is an affirmation that our housing policy here in New York continues to give us the exact opposite of the results we want.
I hope the resources provided above will help us think about how to make things better.
