Believe It Or Not, New Residential Construction Is Down

Given the forest of construction cranes dotting the New York City skyline, this news will seem counterintuitive, if not downright shocking: new building applications for single- and multi-family residential developments across the city fell by 38 percent last year, according to YIMBY. And they’ve declined by more than half since 2014.

Manhattan is still preferred over the other boroughs by developers. The 2016 report reveals that units filed in Manhattan dropped from 5,593 to 4,193, while Brooklyn experienced an even more precipitous plunge, falling from 11,554 units to 6,449.

The trend in 2016 would seem to indicate that the market downturn that became pronounced in Manhattan during last year’s report is now leveling out, while the tsunami of negativity is now reaching the outer boroughs. Brooklyn’s pipeline submissions have fallen by almost 70 percent since the height of 2014, while activity in Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island is returning closer to typically anemic levels.

While large multi-family construction waned in 2016, the city saw a surprising surge in hotel development, which would ordinarily be a positive sign. The number of rooms filed at the DOB rose from 4,286 to 5,653, increasing by 31 percent. Hey, the city has to put its record homeless population up for the night somewhere.