Why so much regulation around gas in NYC? In NYC, most heating uses steam, and most steam heaters use gas. Local Law 84 gives us data on fossil fuel type for big buildings: More than 70% of buildings use gas and not oil, and only 10% of buildings use neither gas nor oil.

Lots of talk about gas and boilers in NYC recently. Some context. 80% of residential buildings are heated by steam (per "demystifying steam" report from 2019). And many of these boilers are old, around 15% are older than 40 years. Graph created by me, using LL87 dataset.

Are we running out of surface parking lots in NYC? Do not worry! There's around 8,000 of them left. (circle area proportional to lot area).

386 parking lots turned into 17,969 housing units (NYC, 2018-2024). I've failed you by not providing a map, as I should. Circle area proportional to building area.

386 parking lots turned into 17,969 housing units (NYC, 2018-2024)

How often are lots in NYC overbuilt (building area > zoned area, example in previous post)? 36,000 lots and 628,000 units. Our zoning is saying: "See this housing that we've already built, with over a million people living in it? We can't have this again!"

How do you feel about this building, looking at Prospect Park? It uses almost twice the allowable floor-area-ratio (6.02 in R8X)! Our zoning says: "We don't want this and it shouldn't be allowed". Do you think it should be allowed?

The NYC housing pipeline, part 2: Timing your permit You might have heard that NYC had a permitting spike in 2022, due to expiration of the 421-a tax program. It's even more stark if broken out by month: Applicants really know how to time a permit. 🧵

A boom for NYC housing? July and August had an average of more than 4,000 units filed from new buildings, more than double what we had 2023 to 2025H1. Queens is a huge driver, Manhattan is <10%. What's driving this, and is this here to last?

The NYC housing pipeline, part 1 (of many to come) Where is new housing about to be built? The map shows filings (the earliest signal) for residential buildings with >=20 units, filed after July 2025. Circle area is proportional to units proposed (highest=500).

I'm seeing a bit of a boom in NYC residential construction filings, starting in April of 2025. Any ideas what might be driving this? Example projects since August: - Queens: 61-06 Junction Blvd (630 units), 35-18 Steinway (560 units) - Manhattan: 413 east 120st (282 units)

A good question about upzoning: If this leads to more housing and lower rent, doesn't that lower returns for developers, stopping future construction? That's partially true, but misses that upzoning itself creates opportunities and raises returns. The buildout lowers returns back to baseline.

You want to learn about Single-Room-Occupancy in NYC? How about a 83-page landmark approval document for 120 Kingston Ave in Brooklyn, with floorplans and great pictures. To find it: DOB Now website => Job # = B00804606 => Documents => Landmark approval

In the new economy, it’s crucial for coffee shop owners to keep up with the literature

Common argument for NYC: "Current zoning allows for lots of area to be added, *thus* zoning isn't a big constraint" Let me even give you that data: Built = 7.6 billion sqft Addable = 3.9 billion sqft (that's a lot!) But ... the conclusion "zoning isn't a big constraint" doesn't follow! 🧵

How many units of zoned area can NYC gain from rezoning? Let's look at current FAR to calculate this. 1. Transit-oriented, double the FAR within 0.5 miles of transit => +5M units (first image) 2. FAR needs to be >= 2.0: +3M units Anything you'd want me to calculate? 🧵

NYC *is* full, hear me out: As a general rule, new development is profitable if a tax lot uses 30% or less of the zoning floor area. That's rare, usually less than 5% of lots in high-demand neighborhoods. So we don't build. Is it *actually* full? Of course not, we can increase the zoned area!

Spot the correlation for NYC density First image: Number of floors, range: 1=red, 5=green Second image: Max Floor-Area-Ratio, same range Block-level averages.

Just like we can predict new construction in NYC, we can also predict what permits will get pulled, measured by years after filing approval: - Bigger buildings take longer to complete and require more sidewalk sheds - As development progresses, permits shift from fences towards mechanical work

When does development happen? Let's predict this at the lot level, which I call the "dev score" See Rogers Ave & Sterling St in Lefferts Garden: What's demarcating the low-development area to the left (red) from the high-development area to the right (green)? (Thread)

Historic districts (yellow) and new residential development (2010+) in Manhattan

When you have a historic district in a high-demand area, you see new development all around the district, with the district itself excluded. Example: Mount Morris Park historic district (yellow) in Harlem

We take certain things for granted about real estate development in NYC, but we shouldn’t: - Low zoned FAR makes development unprofitable - To become profitable, big developments requires tax breaks We created the need for tax breaks which end up costing taxpayer money!

New residential housing (>=10 units, since 2010) seems to be afraid of Park Slope.

A NYC councilmember recently described that they aim for “extracting better deals” through zoning review. That sounds good, right? But it’s key to note that the deals only exist because we’ve restricted how much housing we get.

When it comes to NYC ballot proposal in November, one stands out: "Create a Digital City Map to Modernize City Operations" The question on everyone's mind: Why does this even need to be on a ballot?

The three horsemen of NYC permitting: Sidewalk Sheds, Supported Scaffolds and (introduced in 2024) Suspended Scaffolds. Is there a trend? Hard to make out if the categories change mid-way. More soon! Link: zonedinsights.com/search/all/p...

Development in NYC is heavily clustered, either in already-dense areas (Midtown) or recently rezoned areas (Long Island City + Downtown Brooklyn). New developments since 2015 with more than 200 units, completion state as of 2025 (green = COO, red = no COO yet) (Interactive map, link below)

You want to understand what's getting built in Downtown Brooklyn?

If you do care about NYC surface parking lots as deeply as I do, I've created a link just for you: zonedinsights.com/search/parki... - 7,800 lots - 71M sq ft zoning floor area (that's a lot of housing) - Some expensive sales Lots of scaffolding permits.

Sometimes you just want a baseline understanding of NYC housing and zoning. Something that came up yesterday: How much total zoned capacity do we have in the city? Easy: Go to zonedinsights.com/search (overview tab). And then you add filters to narrow in.

The housing we don't have, part 4: Prices in Brooklyn Simple economic models predicts that buildings are higher when demand is higher. Not the case in Brooklyn, e.g. Park Slope is expensive (first image) but only 3 stories (second image). The reason: Zoning doesn't allow building more.

The housing we don't have, part 3: Brooklyn, block by block Image 1: Average number of floors Image 2: Average zoned max FAR. Floors and max FAR are high in similar places, and they quickly drop off once you leave downtown!

The housing we don't have, part 2: Real-world data. This is Brooklyn, number of floors plotted against the distance to the Brooklyn Tower. Low density starts close to the high-rises.

The housing we don't have: The grey bars show how many US cities are built and zoned: High-rises in the center, and then you quickly get single-family homes. In green: Additional housing we could see if we zone for gentle density.

To predict the completion time of a building (filing to COO) in NYC, the most powerful variable is the Number of floors: In a regression model, doubling floors increases completion time by 40%. Simple summary chart to illustrate below:

Building housing takes a long time. For projects with 11-99 units in NYC, the time from initial construction filing to certificate of occupancy is around 5 years. Coming up: More on all the steps of this process. And the juicy details on why projects fail.

Mayor Adams talks about "Small Business Forward 2.0" a lot, does anyone have any data on this? I'd be easy to validate: We should see fees paid (which are public data) go down substantially. www.nyc.gov/mayors-offic...

Did you know that we have detailed data on energy usage in NYC buildings due to Local Law 87 reporting? E.g. see HVAC shares, weighted by building size. Big caveat: It's a rolling 10% sample each year, so it's noisy!

Another way to think of NYC's bizarre property tax: It's basically the opposite of an efficient land value tax: - Most places: Tax rate (% of market value) is constant % - LVT: Tax rate decreases with market value - NYC: Tax rate increases with market value 🧵

Should I become a TikToker and update on NYC real estate news? There’s just so much …

Want to learn more about the reality of air rights in NYC? An easy way to do this is to read the contracts! Check out ACRIS, filter by Development Rights, and read all 1,106 documents.

This was the most expensive air rights transfer in NYC I could find: $208 million for 666,766 square feet of floor area by 77 E 42nd St, for an easy $312 per square foot of air, in 2018. But air rights are tracked inconsistently, so there might be more expensive ones that are tracked differently.

For NYC property tax rates, here's the calculation I think we need: Consider a single-family owner (S) vs a condo owner (C) What's the average $ subsidy from C to S, per year? Compared to a standard property tax (% of sales value), and compared to a land value tax.

How is NYC living space changing through alterations? Also known as: "Townhouse conversion". Left: Multiple units -> Single Unit Right: Single Unit -> Multiple Units 🧵

NYC property sales since 2000, ordered descending by sales amount.

Nothing to see here, just a deed transfer for $810,000,000. It's pretty basic, except for the amount. a836-acris.nyc.gov/DS/DocumentS...

Requiring local evidence before upzoning is often just a sneaky way of trying to prevent upzoning, without making us more informed. Statistics matters: With less data, it’s harder to establish stat significant impact, which is often (falsely) interpreted as “there’s no benefit”

"Your papers show that upzoning works in X and Y, but I live in Z, and you haven't shown it for Z" That's usually followed by either no analysis (assuming upzoning doesn't work) or low-quality analysis from Z. Good research helps inform policy for other places. We don't have to start from scratch!

And who is financing rent-stabilized deals in NYC? The city and state are heavily involved! Here's the top mortgage originators since 2020 for 100% stabilized buildings: