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The YIMBY (Yes-In-My-Backyard) movement is fairly new.

In the United States, early leaders of the YIMBY movement include Sonja Trauss in San Francisco and Nikolai Fedak in New York. The first ever Yes In My Backyard conference was held in Boulder, Colorado, in June 2016.

Nikolai has done an amazing job at chronicling the explosion of new development in NYC over the past several years with his must read web site New York YIMBY.

One of the misconceptions with the NIMBY movement which is largely the opposite of YIMBY is the idea/rule of thumb that low-income housing always drags down property values of nearby properties. In an era challenged by the lack of any type of affordable housing, this makes a bad situation worse.

According to this recent research by Trulia (FYI – I was part of their industry advisory board from 2006-2014), and notably in aggregate form, the impact seems to be non-existent in the majority of the markets covered. One can’t conclude there is no impact as a general rule but it does show that should not be the default assumption.

The above infographic is from this Weekend’s New York Times’ real estate section column called ‘Calculator’ – Low-Income Housing: Why Not in My Neighborhood?. The methodology used in the Trulia research was the following:

To measure this, Trulia compared the median price per square foot of nearby homes (within 2,000 feet of low-income housing) with that of homes farther away (2,001 to 4,000 feet) over 20 years, starting 10 years before the low-income housing was built and ending 10 years after.

Tags: New York Times, Calculator, Michael Kolomatsky, Low-Income, Neighborhood

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Back in the mid 1990s after my wife and I moved to Fairfield County, Connecticut from Manhattan, I noticed the decline in housing prices further from the first express stop in Stamford, CT.

I worked on an updated version of the concept for this weekend’s New York Times Real Estate section: What’s Your Commute Time Worth? They did an amazing job on the graphic.

Tags: Michael Kolomatsky, Metro-North, commuting, Stamford, CT, Grand Central Station

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UPDATE: The following article made the front page of the NYT today, my 13th A1 appearance (but who’s counting?).

New York Times’ Matt Chabin writes a piece about the “Super Tall” phenomenon on Manhattan’s West 57th nicknamed “Billionaires’ Row” called Developers of Manhattan Spires Look Past 1,000-Foot Neighbors.

“It’s like the Who song,” said Jonathan Miller, president of the appraisal firm Miller Samuel. “You can see for miles and miles and miles. Until you look into your neighbor’s building.”

The changing skyline is a well worn and controversial discussion throughout much of Manhattan’s storied (pun intended) real estate history. It’s quite amazing to appreciate how much the skyline has changed over the past century, nearly always moving taller. In the current iteration of growth, the potential benefit seems to be the financing of affordable housing.

Tags: A1, Billionaires Row, Super Talls, West 57th Street, views, building height, Matt Chaban

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Here’s a cool rotating gif map on rising U.S. land prices based on data taken from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (in partnership with University of Wisconsin-Madison).

I’ve used their data for my Bloomberg View column talking about the price of land. In short, the land is what appreciates, not the improvements to the land such as the house itself. The price of land is a key issue in the U.S. affordable housing crisis we are now experiencing.

Here’s a 40 year view on the price of land for residential development provided by Howmuch.net

Source: Howmuch.net

Tags: land, howmuch.net

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Cracks in the “sharing economy” are forming.

As reported on Airbnb — and real estate big shots — where it hurts” Inman News…

The ad says that nearly half of the revenue from the site goes to “real estate moguls,” a figure taken from the New York State Office of the Attorney General’s “Airbnb in the City” report from October 2014.

Tags: video, Airbnb, sharing economy, New York State Office of the Attorney General

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A few months ago I was approached by film students Clàudia Prat & Eric French to speak to the housing market as part of a larger project called “What is Home?” series.

I’m a big fan of documentaries and this is worth watching.

Their effort was called: NYC Home Shuffle (5:51 minutes):

Part of a global trend, New York City’s homes become a commodity: an investment instead of a right. Yet a global movement responds.
By Clàudia Prat & Eric French
whatishome.nyc // May 2015

NYC Home Shuffle from Studio 20 on Vimeo.

Tags: documentary, Clàudia Prat & Eric French

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Read my latest Bloomberg View column Rent Control vs. Keeping Landlords Happy.

Here’s an excerpt…

The past few weeks have offered a window on the tensions between landlords and tenants in New York’s real estate market. Amid the political machinations in the city and the state’s capital, the New York State Assembly let rent controls lapse, temporarily placing more than 2 million tenants in housing limbo. A tentative deal has since been worked out to extend the regulations for four years but the details are not yet available…

[read more]

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Tags: Andrew Cuomo, rent control, rent stabilization, Albany, New York State Assembl, landlord

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Read my latest Bloomberg View column Want a House? Good Luck With the Down Payment. This post also went #1 on the Bloomberg Terminal and on the public facing BloombergView.com site for 2 days. Super crazy.

Here’s an excerpt…

Saving for a down payment has long been a big challenge for anyone who wants to buy a home. And it got harder after the financial crisis, as lenders insisted on down payments of 20 percent or more for conventional mortgages, which make up the bulk of the market…

[read more]

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Tags: downloads, coventional, Mortgage

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Read my latest Bloomberg View column How Long Before a Home Lists for $1 Billion?. This post went #1 on the Bloomberg Terminal and on the public facing BloombergView.com site for about a day and a half. Crazy.

Here’s an excerpt…

When a Los Angeles hilltop home that’s under construction was recently priced at a record half-billion dollars, it looked like a one-off in excess. The same thought occurred to me late last year when real estate investor Jeff Greene, who won big betting against the housing market before the financial crisis, priced his renovated Beverly Hills, California, home at $195 million…

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Tags: List, highest list price, Jeff Greene

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Always fun to visit with Tom Keene on Bloomberg Surveillance Television – I forgot to post it last week.

Did I tell you I have a lot going on?

It’s a short clip on housing and why we don’t have enough inventory. Bloomberg Intelligence’s Carl Riccadonna spoke along with me – never met him before but he was impressive and best of all, we were in sync.

Tags: Tom Keene, Bloomberg TV, Bloomberg Surveillance, Bloomberg Intelligence, Carl Riccadonna

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Read my latest Bloomberg View column Costly City Housing Is an Economic Drag.

Here’s an excerpt…

It’s tough living in a big city — the people, the traffic, the noise. Oh, and did we mention the cost of housing? Contrary to conventional wisdom, high and rising housing costs in the U.S.’s biggest cities are not ideal for an economic recovery. Just the opposite: When housing costs take a big bite out of incomes, it diverts money that could be spent on local goods and services or invested in new businesses that stimulate growth…

[read more]

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Tags: Harvard JCHS, U.S. Census, economic recovery, S&P/Case-Shiller 20-City index, tight credit, National Association of Realtors

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Saw this is in the most recent edition of New York Times Magazine. Brilliant

Tags: Gentrification, New York Times Magazine, cartoons

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