Why Yimby and tenant groups can’t work together

Since persuading the state to overhaul New York’s rent law in 2019, critics of the real estate industry have not pushed any important legislation through in Albany. Then again, neither has real estate. The two sides have merely defeated each other’s initiatives, battling to a stalemate. Progressives stymied efforts to tweak the new rent law, blocked a measure allowing building owners to avoid fines by buying renewable energy credits, and ensured that 421a expired. Landlords,

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Damned if you do: Inside Glacier Equities’ epic co-op conversion

In the 1980s, two brothers converted some Bronx and Northern Manhattan rental buildings into co-ops and began selling the units. Then things went sideways. The owners stopped mid-stream, passing the portfolio to an heir who didn’t resume sales — or do much of anything else. That created the real estate equivalent of a ticking time bomb. Years turned into decades as the properties fell into disrepair. They had little cash in reserve, were operating at

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Handicapping Hochul’s housing agenda

Everyone hates politics, even the people who also love it. Politics just seems to kill good ideas more easily than it promotes them. Take Gov. Kathy Hochul’s housing agenda. If its fate rested on logic alone, it would pass as soon as she printed the bills. Getting the policy right is easy. It’s the politics that are hard. Moments after Hochul announced her plan on Jan. 10, Assembly member Edward Flood, a Long Island Republican,

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Housing solution: “Pay” pols who approve projects

Among the first things I learned as a New Jersey reporter was an odd word: ratables. It came up when towns considered development proposals. Ratables is a Jersey euphemism for property taxes. Local officials always wanted to know how much money a project would add to their coffers — and how much it would take out. Housing was viewed as a net loser. Electeds thought it would cost more to educate new residents’ children than

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Max Scherzer closes on 5-BR home for $400K under ask

Mets ace Max Scherzer knows a thing or two about negotiating, having hammered out two of the priciest contracts in baseball history and the latest collective bargaining agreement between Major League Baseball players and owners. Those skills served him well when it came to buying a home on Long Island, property records show. The Hall of Fame-bound pitcher just closed on an Old Brookville mansion for a cool $5 million, which was $400,000 below the

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NYC planning commissioner turns Christmas Twitter troll

In the wee hours of Christmas morning, New York City Planning Commissioner Leah Goodridge was distributing not presents but bad tidings on Twitter. At 12 a.m. on Dec. 25, the attorney and public official clapped back at a user who had knocked her housing policy ideas. “Engaging in defamation might seem cute on Twitter,” Goodridge wrote. “It’s not cute in the courtroom though.” Engaging in defamation might seem cute on Twitter. It’s not cute in

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Would Vienna’s social housing work in NYC? It already does

When four dozen left-wingers visited Vienna this fall to check out the Austrian city’s celebrated “social housing” program, the reactions from both sides of the political spectrum were predictable. First, the comically right-wing New York Post mocked the trip,  giving socialism haters their dopamine fix. “It is unknown how much the expenses-paid trip actually cost,” the Post’s story said, quoting anonymous tweets that called the privately funded trip a pro-communism “junket.” Two days later, from

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More myths, drivel and balderdash hurting real estate

This is the second of two columns about real estate myths. Read the first one here. Yesterday, we discussed the idea that the real estate industry conspires to keep prices high; why capitalism can create plentiful and affordable everything except housing; why only price controls can solve the affordability problem; and how real estate causes gentrification by hatching rich people out of thin air. Today, we present four more misbegotten notions about real estate that

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The conspiracy theories plaguing real estate

Forget what you learned about the birds and the bees. Some people are convinced that well-off New Yorkers are products of real estate, not biology: They simply materialize when a developer builds market-rate housing. This is like saying babies are delivered by a stork, but it’s what passes for real estate knowledge among many critics of the industry. It’s one of the pernicious myths popularized by folks who blame real estate for the high cost

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5 lessons from Silverstein’s Astoria deal

There’s no how-to book for developers negotiating for City Council approval of their projects. Or for the Council member on the other side of the table. “Ulurp for Dummies”  hasn’t been published because its target audience is only a few dozen developers and 51 term-limited City Council members. In its place, The Real Deal brings you an abridged version, prompted by the big rezoning deal reached Thursday for the Innovation QNS project in Astoria. Our

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