New York YIMBY’s 2020 Construction Report Shows 36,467 New Residential Unit Filings, A 7.1% Jump
YIMBY’s 2019 New Building Report, released this time last year, showed a major jump in applications from 2017 into 2018, with new residential units filed with the Department of Buildings rising from 20,393 to 34,039. YIMBY’s 2020 New Construction Report shows that citywide gains continued into 2019, with total units filed increasing to 36,467, a jump of 2,428 or 7.1%. The full report is available in spreadsheet format at the link for $199.
In 2019, YIMBY predicted stability for the year ahead based on trends in affordable housing, as well as another commercial “supertall or two,” which New York did get in the form of the 1,322-foot filing for JPMorgan’s 270 Park Avenue. Affordable and peripheral housing also drove the borough-by-borough trends in growth from 2018 into 2019, with gains occurring in Brooklyn, The Bronx, and Queens offsetting small drops in submissions from both Manhattan and Staten Island.
Brooklyn’s raw new unit count was 12,527, up 5.6% from 11,864 in 2018. The Bronx overtook Queens for the second spot, with 9,321 units, up 25% from 2018’s total of 7,449. Queens gained 8,357 new unit filings, up 7.1% from 7,798.
Manhattan saw 5,434 new units filed, a 7.9% drop from 2018’s count of 5,902. And Staten Island’s count fell 19.3%, from 1,026 to 828.
While residential filings were up overall, hotel filings took a major hit. New rooms filed dropped 31.2% year over year, from 5,519 to 3,797.
Shifting hotel markets appear to have been driven by legislative changes, and developers like Sam Chang have announced impending retirement due to the sweeping reforms of late. Despite said announcement, Chang was responsible for a very major hotel filing on December 23rd in Manhattan, totaling 974 rooms or 26% of the total new citywide count for the year in a single building.
In terms of overall height, 2019 gained substantially on 2018. Last year, new permits were filed for 56 buildings of 200 feet or higher, and 150 of 100 feet or higher, up from totals of 39 and 123 in 2018, respectively. Despite the increase in dispersed bulk, the gains in filings at the top of the skyline were limited to 270 Park Avenue and only four other skyscrapers in excess of 500 feet. Two of those were on Manhattan’s far West Side, at 610 West 30th Street (545′) and 451 Tenth Avenue (535′), the tallest was in Hunters Point South at 1-15 57th Avenue (608′), and the last could become the tallest in all of Flushing, at 71-12 Park Avenue (530′).
[…]
