I'm reading up on the NY/NYC income tax proposals, and I really wish there was a data-driven political discussion in between: A. The revenue of a tax is exactly Base x Rate. No one changes behavior in response. B. Every tax ever is on the down-trending part of the Laffer curve and loses us money.

If you like the maps I've created, then I want to create your own maps, for free. The full ambition (we're on it): Summarize anything (tax lots, filings, permits, sales, etc), based on any filter, by any geography. The blog post shows how to do it. blog.citytracker.ai/creating-map...

How do historic districts (black outline) change over time? Let's look at the West Village and nearby Manhattan. Are we getting new units via new buildings? No! Instead, we're losing units via townhouse combinations.

The water analogy for NYC housing and the charter changes. There’s a water shortage and each neighborhood has a well. Should the city take into account how using the well affects neighbors? Yes. Should neighbors be able to block reasonable usage of the well by others in the city? No.

These Historic-District-Townhouse-Combos in NYC are extremely concentrated: Multiple blocks have 20 or more filings. Those few blocks explain a big share of all combos. Image 1: West Village Image 2: UWS + UES

Phenomenal article, glad to contribute. If you want to learn about townhouse combinations (excludes combining buildings), I've got a research tool for you! Maps show conversions ending with one unit. First image: Neighborhoods Second image: Manhattan blocks. citytracker.ai/results/publ...

A lot of the housing crisis is driven by unstated, and bad, defaults. When rents increase, cities attempt upzoning, huge process to justify the change. A better default: If rents rise, zoned capacity automatically expands, and we’d have to justify the status quo to keep it.

Zoning pet peeve: Wasteful front setbacks. See 76 S 2nd Ave in Brooklyn: A few feet set back. Likely to be at same setback as left adjacent ... but that's unnecessary. The building to the right (after empty lot) has no setbacks! So we could've removed setbacks, consistent with building on right.

There's a common argument on NYC property taxes that is too smart by half and misleading in practice: "Raising property taxes on multi-fam owners does not raise rents due to tax incidence" Problems: 1. Raises defaults, many already at brink 2. Lowers new dev, aka long-run benefits to renters.

In the news: The rezoning proposal for 217-14 24th Avenue Rezoning in Bayside (Queens). What do you prefer: Image 1: Current Image (corrected) Image 2: Proposed Community Board vote on proposal: In favor: 1 Against: 31

A big part of housing discourse pits humans against other humans: Transplants or Immigrants. A core false belief here is that we compete for the same limited housing. How do we overcome this? By building more, and letting cities grow. (Side effects: Better finances and happiness)

In NYC housing development, everything ends up concentrated. Previously: For architects, 50% of new units come from just 11 licenses. Now: *Filing companies*. Because you need experts for all these forms! - 50% of new units come from just 10 filing companies. - DVA Advisors: 14%

Block lengths for NYC, v3 Ready to be printed as posters, but I'd love your feedback before it goes on my (and your?) living room wall. Link to full-quality PNG below.

Broadway creates mini blocks. My commitment: You’ll be able to print this (and similar) as a poster. Working on digital files for each borough that can be downloaded freely. Just needs a bunch of aesthetic details.

In Manhattan, we used to add units the old-fashioned way, by building something new. No longer! Looking at filings from 2024 and 2025, units added from alterations (mostly office-to-resi) exceed units added from new buildings.

This list of architects is now live and interactive: Go to citytracker.ai/applicants to see the top 100 applicants by units added, and click on them to see the architect summary.

The architecture concentration in NYC keeps on going. About 90% of jobs are alterations that do not add units. So let's look at the level of the job. Tom Petersen, that is impressive! Fun outlier: Nikolai Katz's firm shows up even here, with a 1/3 mix of alterations, alt CO, and new builds.

In NYC, architecture is highly concentrated. The top 11 licenses make up for 50% (!!) of all new units that were filed since 2024. And they each concentrate on either new buildings or alterations.

Research idea: Review community board decisions to infer how much they value market rate housing (M) vs stabilized (S). V = a * M + S My hunch: For them, a is around -1, so you only get approval if you are >50% subsidized (and thus likely lose money). Most housing researchers: a is close to +1

An example of NYC zoning: This is a block away from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. You can't build housing there because it's C8-2 zoning, which is for "for heavy repair shops and automotive uses". This was decided in ... 1961. I venture to say: The neighborhood changed since then.

375 Lafayette, In NoHo, might see more housing! @samd.bsky.social thanks for your service! It's easy to focus on process and forget about common sense. Current (first image) and proposed (second image). Which one is better? Which one destroys the neighborhood?

Historic parking lots in NYC? Let's take a tour! (the NoHo one is unlikely to win here) Winner, so far: 39-14 215th St in Flushing, built 1892. No alteration noted, and no big changes since 1940.

Tricky about office-to-resi conversions? Existing floors are too big, not enough light coming in. So here's an interesting project by ND Architecture at 161 W 16th MH, filed 2/5: "partial removal of exist 4th fl roof & 3rd and 4th fl slabs to create new inner court for required light and air"

The ADU lift-off has begun in NYC! We're now at 56 filings, and Queens has taken over. Coming up: A deep dive into the architects and players in this market. bsky.app/profile/city...

NYC office-to-resi conversions are the talk of the town. And they are very concentrated: 2 neighborhoods, a few blocks. The concentration also holds for architects: Ambrose Aliaga-Kelly filed 4 out of 6 of the biggest conversions!

I'm seeing this a lot: "485-x is a handout to developers without enough affordability, let's revoke these privileges". The NYC reality: Property taxes punish multi-fam => Multi-fam development craters => Tax incentives bring them back Want to revoke privileges? Ensure same tax rates for all.

This is a lot of office-to-residential conversions at the southern tip of Manhattan, planned an in progress. 326 added from a new filing on 1/22. Lots more visualizations coming soon, and let me know what you'd want to know about them! bsky.app/profile/city...

Architect Summaries are live (completely free, folks!) Let's look at Morris Adjmi, who you might know from the Wythe Hotel (first image) or the William Vale. You want to see Morris' buildings? Go to Manhattan, south of Midtown, and to Williamsburg. Link: citytracker.ai/applicant/RA...

Architects usually concentrate on certain sub-markets. Let's compare two of them: Tom Petersen: 11,000 initial filings since 2018 (don't ask me how) Nikolai Katz: 933 initial filings. I've also added a chart showing the types of jobs they complete. Can you guess who's who?

You want to find a rent-stabilized building in NYC? Option 1: Go through this city-provided spreadsheet (in PDF) Option 2: Find it on a map (link below). I parsed those spreadsheets so you can use option 2. Try it out and let me know what you'd want added!

Scenarios in NYC where lots might sell for negative value: 1. Rent stabilized, with negative profit margin 2. Landmarked but falling apart, repair costs exceed value of the building (see image). Any others? I'll try to find them! (I've checked, the ACRIS data does not contain negative values).

Oooh you can buy this place at 1000 Ocean Ave for only $2.6M with monumental temple front, Corinthian pilasters”. It's landmarked, and it does require some repairs. What do you even do when it's so run down but you're required to keep the aesthetics? www.zillow.com/homedetails/...

The NYC housing market, summarized and rounded: - 8M residents, living in - 4M Units (actual: 3.7M) - 2M units are rentals (actual: 2.2M) Of those 2.2M Units, a large share is non-market: - 1.0M (50%) are rent-stabilized - 175K NYCHA - 125K: other programs

A wonderful article by @stephenjacobsmith.com: www.vitalcitynyc.org/articles/nyc... Just to illustrate these M districts where we can't have supermarkets >10K sqft by right. Often, these are popular, crowded areas! (Don't get me started on "light manufacturing")

A common argument against upzoning: "We first need to build out transit". This assumes that housing has *negative* value if not well-served by transit, presumably because of congestion. But ... while the benefit is clear (lower rents), I've never been shown evidence that such costs are large.

NYC housing fact of the day, aka "we're full": The median number of floors: Manhattan = 5 All other boroughs = 2

Controversy! 177 units right next to the Botanical Garden in Brooklyn. Lots of drama. Shadows! High rises! The map shows that there’s lots of new stuff getting built there.

Coming soon: Architect Summaries for NYC! What do you want to see here? How do you search for architects?

Interesting application: 254 W 35th St, Garment District The article below mentions Cayre Equity buying this for self storage, but ... this is an alteration to go from 14 to 166 residential units! It's also part of a 7-lot zoning-lot agreement, just sold the easement for $4.8M!

Casual walk through Brooklyn

Latest count of ADU filings in NYC: 33

Where's the religion happening? Share of lots with class "Religious", by neighborhood

Registered Architects for big new buildings in NYC, 2022-2025.

Bad air quality in NYC today. Does anyone know a way to do root cause analysis here? I’ve heard of recent building fires and current weather both possibly playing a role.

Incentives matter when designing a tax incentive. In NYC the 485-x incentive has higher requirements for buildings that have more than 99 units. Here's the distribution of unit sizes among applications:

New housing units permitted in NYC, by month. Source: Housing DB Can you spot a pattern?

The "Pull-Up-The-Ladder-Behind-You index" for NYC: Share of lots that are built to over 100% of zoned capacity, by neighborhood. (Details in thread)

Nice statistic from a sample of Manhattan zoning applications: How much of the maximum zoned area is used, in percent? Median: 98% (Can exceed 100%, depends a bit on how form is filled out)

If you want to know the latest in NYC real estate, I created a "company" account with semi-automated updates: @citytracker.bsky.social This aims to be *fast* and break lots of news. Feedback very appreciated. Today is a fun one: 74 new units at the Waterfront in Averne, Queens, filed 12/28

The trend in ADU filings in NYC. It's going 🔺 Notes: - Search is imperfect, likely undercounting, especially alterations. - Not all filings get approved and not all approvals get built.