As of 2011, more than 60% of all apartments in New York are price regulated in some way. Rent stabilization destroys the incentive for developers to maintain and improve properties, and combined with the ridiculous historical preservation laws binds their hands in replacing properties with higher-capacity housing.
That's why most of the housing in Brooklyn and Queens is former tenement housing built god knows how long ago and maintained like crap. Landowners can't easily decide to just tear that shit down and put up mid/high-rises that could house 10x more people and bring down prices.
>>>and put up mid/high-rises that could house 10x more people and bring down prices.
Except rent prices never go down. This is what you outsiders don't freakin understand. Even if you got rid of the rent control and stabilization laws, made it all "free" market, you'd never, ever see a decrease in rents. When people fled post-9/11 and no one was renting, rents did not go down. They side-stepped that by offering one or two or three months of "free" rent, while the registered rent remained in the city's books. Rents never decrease. And never will unless there is some catastrophe that makes the city inhospitable.
First, there is no reason to believe outsiders to NYC have a better or worse grasp of the underlying economics than insiders to NYC.
Prices in NYC do go down. Rents in NYC fell 10-12% during the down turn (and of course 2-3 months of "free" rent is economically indistinguishable from a drop in rents).
Moreover, rents are sticky like most prices. What increased supply does is keep the rent from going up so quickly.
(and of course 2-3 months of "free" rent is economically indistinguishable from a drop in rents).
I hate the "free months" with a passion, because they carry an implicit rent-raise next year: even if rent stays the same, your effective rent rises because you're paying for 12 months instead of 11.
I usually try to negotiate the "free months" into a lowered rent (e.g. $2250/month instead of $2400 with a one-month concession). It means that I pay a little more in the first year, but next year's rent will be anchored to this year's.
The difference between median market rate rents and median stabilized rents are quite small outside of Manhattan south of 96th Street.[1] Many neighborhoods have large number of nominally rent stabilized being offered for preferential rates (i.e. below the legally allowed maximum rent.)
Also, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx have plenty of nice, and dense, housing. You should try leaving Downtown Manhattan by Disney World (tm) every once and a while.
As of 2011, more than 60% of all apartments in New York are price regulated in some way. Rent stabilization destroys the incentive for developers to maintain and improve properties, and combined with the ridiculous historical preservation laws binds their hands in replacing properties with higher-capacity housing.
That's why most of the housing in Brooklyn and Queens is former tenement housing built god knows how long ago and maintained like crap. Landowners can't easily decide to just tear that shit down and put up mid/high-rises that could house 10x more people and bring down prices.