REN T I N G OW N I N G DE V E L O P I N G IN V E S T M E N T FI N A N C E Real Estate VOL. 3 NO. 3 MARCH 3-9, 2016 MARKETPLACE PROPOSED HOLLISWOOD DEVELOPMENT UNDER ATTACK Community outraged by plans. Page 2 Buying Beats Renting In Queens PAGE 2 Is Your Neighborhood The Borough s Priciest? PAGE 4 Experts Cast Doubt on Affordable Housing Plan PAGE 8
Page 2 March 3-9, 2016 Holliswood s Hot Topic: Residents Fret Over Development Plan At Hospital Site Tribune/Press Real estate MaRketplace BY LYNN EDMONDS Staff Writer Some Holliswood residents are profoundly upset about plans for a new development in their neighborhood that would put 31 condo units and 20 homes on the former Holliswood Hospital property. Steve Cheung, a real estate developer with properties in Long Island City, Elmhurst, Flushing and Ridgewood - including the former Aloft hotel - bought the property in July for $10.9 million, is responsible for the plans. Opponents of the development say that the multitude of dwellings would ruin the character and beauty of the neighborhoods, which is one of the most picturesque, spacious and leafy in all of Queens. The proposed condo is a MAJOR distortion of the character of HOL- LISWOOD, a newsletter from Linda Valentino, President of the Holliswood Civic Association, said. In my opinion, it constitutes a substantial deterioration of our bucolic Queens neighborhood. As presently contemplated, this cookie-cutter project will definitely bring noise, pollution and congestion to the area. Valentino added that the outdoor parking would make the area look like a parking lot or a used car dealership. Each house on the neighborhood s winding roads has its own architectural style, is set far back from the road, and surrounded by trees, shrubs, and other landscaping. There are no cars parked on the street. In fact, there are very few cars at all. In the middle of a March day, only two cars drove by the Holliswood Hospital property in a fifteen minute time period, and one of the them was a van driving on to the property itself, where workers had begun to clean the interior of the old hospital. The new development would increase the population density of the area, with smaller lots - still generous by most neighborhoods standards and more tightly packed houses. And Plans for the development of Holliswood Hospital. with current architectural blueprints for the new development showing parking spots for up to 131 cars, the planned development would almost undoubtedly increase traffic. In an effort to stop these changes to the neighborhood, the civic released a petition against the proposal for the site of the former rehabilitation center for individuals dealing with substance abuse. If builders are allowed to come into neighborhoods where people work hard to maintain the beauty and value of their homes, I feel it is an assault on the American Dream, the petition reads. Holliswood is an R1-2 district. While constructing the freestanding houses would not require a zoning variance, the condos would. Reach Lynn Edmonds at (718) 357-7400 x127, ledmonds@queenstribune. com or @Ellinoamerikana PLANS COURTESY OF HOLLISWOOD CIVIC ASSOCIATION Report: Buying Beats Renting After 3 Years in Queens BY MICHAEL STAHL When does it make the most sense to buy in New York as opposed to renting? That s a question StreetEasy posed to its data scientists, who analyzed 2015 sales price and rent rate statistics for more than 300 neighborhoods across the five boroughs. They contrived a tipping point for each neighborhood, representing the number of years it would take for the accumulated costs of renting a home to either equal or exceed the costs of buying a comparably sized home in the same area. Then, the site s team computed median figures for each borough and the city as a whole. In a press release last month, StreetEasy revealed that residents in Queens can rent for less time three years before making a financially responsible call to buy when compared to people in any other borough. The median tipping point for all of New York is 4.9 years. Relatively low sales prices combined with the fact that the typical Queens buyer puts down a 26.7 percent down payment, means the rent vs. buy decision tips in the favor of buying in a much shorter time period than other boroughs, Alan Lightfeldt, one of the site s data scientists wrote in an email to the Tribune. In an area like Manhattan, the cost of homes is prohibitively high in many neighborhoods, contributing to a higher tipping point. Some of the city s sections with the lowest tipping points are set in Queens, including Alley Park, which includes Oakland Gardens and Bayside Hills (1.1 years), Howard Beach (1.4 years) and Briarwood d (1.5 years). Lightfeldt also wrote that there is less variation in tipping points between Queens neighborhoods because prices around the borough h are relatively similar. Resale prices in Manhattan and Brooklyn vary y widely by comparison, he added. d. The median resale price exceeds $1 million in only one neighborhood Douglaston, which, correspondingly, is the Queens neighborhood d with the highest tipping point, 6.55 years. Long Island City (6.1 years) and Fresh Meadows (5.8 years) round out Queens top three. For a complete list of tipping points by neighborhood, visit streeteasy.com/blog/tipping-point- buy-versus-rent
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Page 4 March 3-9, 2016 Exclusive: Queens Priciest and Most Affordable Neighborhoods Revealed Tribune/Press Real estate MaRketplace Median PPSF Rankings by Neighborhood for 2015 Queens By MICHAEL STAHL In an exclusive study conducted for the Queens Tribune, StreetEasy.com determined the median price per square foot (PPSF) of real estate across 34 Queens neighborhoods. The site compiled and analyzed 2015 sales data from the New York City Department of Finance, looking only at sections that saw at least 10 closings last year. As one might expect, Long Island City remained the borough s most expensive neighborhood, and by a wide margin. Its $1,069 PPSF topped second-place Astoria s figure by an astonishing $354 and was just $100 shy of what the borough s five cheapest neighborhoods cost combined. LIC s PPSF actually exceeded what people paid last year in the posh Brooklyn enclave Park Slope ($1,033 PPSF) and was just $2 shy of the cost of real estate in Manhattan s elite Upper East Side. LIC has come a long way, StreetEasy data scientist Alan Lightfeldt said in a recent interview. To be on par with [those sections] speaks volumes about how much more attractive this neighborhood has become. It s a fairly matured and developed real estate market. Lightfeldt added that the reasons behind LIC s real estate cost explosion is obviously its proximity to Manhattan, as well as the fact that much of the property there is relatively new. The median price per square foot throughout Queens reached $447 last year, with LIC, Astoria ($715), Ridgewood ($661), Whitestone ($526), Murray Hill ($499), Queensboro Hill ($486), Middle Village ($470) and Clearview ($453) representing the only neighborhoods that saw a median PPSF beyond the borough s median mark. Lightfeldt said that Astoria benefitted from its proximity to LIC and its easy access to mass transit. When looking in Queens, buyers are first looking at Long Island City and Astoria, he added. If they can t afford a section, they ll take their search one or two neighborhoods over. Ridgewood is among the many Queens areas that, according to Lightfeldt, has seen a recent transformation and a surge of younger residents moving in. Ten years ago it was kind of an unknown neighborhood to anyone who didn t live in Queens, Lightfeldt said, but now it s the new Bushwick of sorts. We re seeing a lot more retail opening up there, a lot more restaurants, and these are harbingers for further development. Though Whitestone has never been a hotspot for firsttime buyers, and does not have abundant mass transit options, the neighborhood s larger, detached homes and land plots helped put it among the borough s priciest. The product that is there is attractive, Lightfeldt said of Whitestone, noting that the top of the list has a mix of well-established, upper-middle-class neighborhoods and emerging enclaves welcoming buyers who do not have backyards as high priorities. He also said that StreetEasy spotted a growth in demand for housing in all of the areas that ran past Queens overall median PPSF. Each of the neighborhoods in the bottom five of Street- Easy s list sit a considerable distance from Manhattan. In spite of the neighborhood s waterfront properties and proximity to Rockaway Beach, Howard Beach s $182 PPSF was Queens second-lowest figure. In separate analysis, StreetEasy saw that it only takes one year of residency in Howard Beach for the cost of renting to exceed the cost of buying there. Lightfeldt said, If you re a person who wants to have the dream of home Sources: StreetEasy & New York City Department of Finance ownership realized, Howard Beach is one of the best places [in the city] to do it. Springfield Gardens ($100), North Corona ($196), Briarwood ($221) and South Jamaica ($235) comprised the rest of the bottom five, while other noteworthy neighborhoods on the list included Flushing ($440), Sunnyside ($435), Woodside ($425), Forest Hills ($410) and Bayside ($318). OP-ED: Housing Court (continued from page 6) Occupancy in order to legally rent to tenants. In return, the only burden on the tenant is to pay their rent timely and refrain from breaching the obligations set forth in the lease. However, those landlords who do not meet these standards and market illegal apartments and those tenants who, knowingly or unknowingly, rent them, are both at risk if the landlordtenant relationship begins to unravel and the law gets involved. A lease is a contract and when breached by either party, there are consequences. If landlords do not provide housing in accordance with the provisions of the lease, they can be issued violations and required to pay fines that can be quite substantial if conditions that need to be corrected go unabated, or be issued a rent reduction order by Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) or be penalized by a rent abatement in favor of the tenant after a hearing or trial. In drastic situations, owners may be required to turn their buildings over to receivers until everything is satisfactorily resolved. When tenants fail to live up to their end of the bargain the landlord s only recourse is to commence a proceeding in Housing Court, as self-help is illegal. Today, it is estimated that approximately 90 percent of landlords have legal representation while 98 percent of the tenants do not and, therefore, it is viewed as an uneven playing field. Yet, as noted above, obtaining a final judgment of possession and warrant of eviction, and, thereafter, successfully having it executed and attempting to recoup legal fees is no slam dunk for the landlord. Every Housing Court has resource centers and Social Services offices to assist the tenants every step through the process to assist in obtaining funds to pay the rent, to preparing answers and motions to defend the case or to obtain the never ending stream of OSCs. Although most tenants are unable to get legal assistance at the outset of their proceeding, Legal Aid or Legal Services, more often than not, will manage to appear on the verge of an eviction in an effort to seek additional time to get funds or to undo months of court time and stipulations between the parties, in an attempt to have the proceeding dismissed, by averring new defenses not previously raised or on technical grounds. The court must now, at this late juncture, re-evaluate the entire matter to determine whether to allow an eviction to proceed; further staying the warrant of eviction; or dismissing the entire case. Currently, there is an effort by the city to obtain sufficient funding to provide legal representation for all tenants in Housing Court who cannot afford their own. Judge Heyman is a retired NYC Housing Court Judge and Counsel to Finz & Finz, PC; and Director of the Housing Legal Clinic at Woodside on the Move
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Page 6 March 3-9, 2016 By SWAIN WEINER Everyone involved in the Queens commercial investment marketplace has been enjoying the upward trajectory for the last five years. It is easy to understand: affordable housing (as an alternative to Manhattan), low unemployment rates for the county (4.4% as of Nov 2015 according to the Department of Labor, second lowest in the five boroughs), i n c r e a s e d awareness Swain Weiner of accessible transportation, the building of new schools and the demand created for new housing by young families all contribute to Queens popularity. These factors as well as low interest rates have created a thriving marketplace. However, it does appear that the market has started to cool down. Overall sales in the county were down 18 percent from July-December 2015, versus six months earlier. Is this the beginning of a correction? Federal Reserve Chairperson Janet Yellen just raised interest rates 1/4%, and now penciled in at least four more increases before the end of the year for a total of 1 to 1 ½ points. The markets are now in turmoil due to new lows in oil prices, stumbling Chinese stocks, and weak U.S. economic data. Low interest rates create a bubble over time that will burst. History has proven that a correction is imminent. It is my opinion that the marketplace is headed towards a correction (if not in it already). There is a prevalence of uncertainty which leads to Tribune/Press Real estate MaRketplace Queens Commercial Investment Market Is it Time For a Correction? Why lease when you can own? That is the rare opportunity coming to Flushing. SkyView Wellness will be located in the most prominent and popular commercial property in Queens The Shops at SkyView Center. ONLY 32 SUITES AVAILABLE SkyView Wellness is your chance to invest in a piece of already successful real estate. It is an opportunity for your practice to be located in the most modern, high-end medical space in Flushing thoughtfully designed for all types of medical and health care practices. But with limited spaces, now is truly the time to act. A NEIGHBORHOOD ON THE RISE SkyView Wellness is ideally situated to capitalize on the shifting heart of Flushing. The future of Flushing will be west of Main Street, including the 60 acre Willets Point development, and the yet to be developed cautiousness in the marketplace and ultimately, lower prices. Be smart, plan ahead. Swain Weiner is president, partner and founder of Greiner Maltz Investment Properties, which specializes in all types of commercial investment sales throughout the five boroughs and Long Island. Over the last several years, he has sold more than $600,000,000 in aggregate sales with more than 2,200 residential units. Skyview Wellness: A Chance to Invest In Yourself and Your Practice parcels of land to the west of College Point Boulevard. Plus the building is accessible via the Q48 bus and major transportation hubs including several highways, the MTA and LIRR. DESIGNED FOR TODAY S MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS SkyView Wellness was designed with your medical office needs in mind. We have incorporated modern amenities befitting today s medical professionals, including large office spaces with flexible layouts, and wiring to accommodate the latest medical equipment. Plus, with all doctors together on one floor, opportunities for cross-referrals are increased and patients will be attracted to the convenient onestop visit for all their medical needs. RENDERING COURTESY OF SKYVIEW WELLNESS
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Page 8 March 3-9, 2016 By LyNN EDMONDS Staff Writer Tribune/Press Real estate MaRketplace Experts: New York Can t Develop It s Way to Affordability Mayor Bill de Blasio s ambitious initiatives to create more affordable housing - Mandatory Inclusionary Housing and Zoning for Quality and Affordability - will likely face a vote in the City Council at the end of March. But along with MIH and ZQA there has been another suggestion for how to create more affordable housing: to build more market rate units. In last months real estate issue, Borough President Melinda Katz said that more market rate units, as well as more affordable units, were necessary to combat the city s affordable housing crisis. It seems like common sense to increase supply in order to take the pressure off prices. But two experts argue that New York City cannot develop itself out of this problem. Matthew Lasner, a professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College, thought new housing supply, unless it completely flooded the markets, would have little impact on rent. Supply and demand just completely cease to work when you re talking about New York City real estate, he said. Lasner said the problem was just that demand in New York had just exceeded supply for far too long, by far too much. We would have to build hundreds of thousands of units of new housing before we caught up with demand, he said. That s not a reality that any of us will ever witness in our lifetime. Paul Graziano, a land use and urban planning consultant, also said that real estate prices in New York City were not driven by the simple laws of supply and demand. The whole city is hyper expensive, he said. It s not a supply and demand issue. It s what the market will bear. Between 2002 and 2013 Graziano worked with state Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside), who was then a councilman, to re-zone many neighborhoods in Queens so that they couldn t be developed. Graziano said that the contextual down-zonings that he orchestrated Mayor Bill de Blasio is advocating for his affordable housing initiatives MIH and ZQA. in the many neighborhoods actually helped keep them relatively affordable for middle class residents, something that might seem counter-intuitive, since they made the potential housing supply in the neighborhood finite. But he argued that when the possibility of development was taken off the table, the properties lost their speculative value for developers; their price ceased to be inflated by the properties potential to become a money-making apartment complex. You re removing the ability for someone to make a lot of money, Graziano said of the downzonings. If the neighborhood were zoned multi-family, [the property value] would jump exponentially. Because each of those properties could be re-developed into multi-family housing. The neighborhood planner, a proud North Flushing resident for his entire life, added that the Mayor s efforts to create affordable housing were creating just that type of spike in property values in the neighborhoods like East New York, where a pilot version of MIH and ZQA is to be implemented. Within three months, the speculative value of the properties in the area jumped 300 percent with the anticipation that all of this market rate housing was going to be build in this neighborhood, he said. The danger with that type of jump in property values, he said, was that this neighborhood was going to completely transform and throw out all of the poor people. Reach Lynn Edmonds at (718) 357-7400 x127, ledmonds@queenstribune.com or @Ellinoamerikana