How do we know that we're zoning-constrained? Sales prices exceed construction costs. Chart: Townhouse in historic districts in Manhattan sell for >$1,800/sqft. What are the costs? I'll let experts give precise amounts, but it should be <$1,000/sqft.

The rise of the heat pump in NYC permits. 2021-2025.

25 years of new housing in NYC

If you live on a block your whole lifetime, how many rat sightings will you report? (Details below, using a small bit of approximation)

I want to analyze if the trash containerization in Harlem reduced rat sitings. My proposal: - Data: 311 calls for rodents. - Containerization started 2025 - Community board (CB) 9 Methodology: Diff-in-diff (time+CB) vs neighbor CB. Outcome: Cases per day (or similar) What do you think?

The Office-To-Residential pipeline in Manhattan, 2015-2026. Watch till the end: There's a lot of action in 2025! Attribution: OpenStreetMap Interactive link: citytracker.ai/results/publ...

You want to find out what's getting built in your NYC neighborhood? Let's look at Downtown Brooklyn since 2015. Live and free: citytracker.ai/results/publ... (Details below)

NY + NYS have a transfer tax that starts with a cliff after $1M. So ... let's look at the distribution of sales prices. The spikes: $900,000 - $901,000 $950,000 - $951,000 $1,050,000 - $1,051,000 And then: $999,000 - $1,000,000 (second image just has wider bins)

For 485-x, I've focused on the 99-unit problem: Fewer units Another possible impact: Since adding units is costly, let's make units themselves as big as possible. And we do find: For 99-unit buildings, unit size is 200 sqft higher than comparable non-485-x buildings.

The 485-x tax benefit in NYC became effective during 2024. It proscribes higher requirements for buildings with 100+ units To avoid the requirement, you can build 99 units. Did this rule affect new housing in the city? I'm going to say: Yes!

Building height, block by block

You heard about Transit-Oriented Development (TOD): Upzone near transit. Great idea! But let me advocate for something oft-forgotten: Non-Transit-Oriented Development (NOD) Why? In cities, housing is so valuable that upzoning can be good even far away from mass transit.

The IBX is great, but let's be even more ambitious. I present to you: The Five-Borough Express Ring FIBER Two route options: Scenic Swamps or Journal Square.

Yep

Lots of new housing in Long Island City. Showing progress since 2015. Permitted: Orange Certificate of Occupancy: Green (Not 100% accurate yet, but will validate and release soon, free to use)

Who works with who? Construction companies in NYC: - Expeditors (orange) - Applicants (blue, usually architect or engineer) - Contractors (green) Top 3 clusters

In NYC, there are 158 surface parking lots in historic districts. Map focuses on lower Manhattan. Link: citytracker.ai/results/publ... Street views below.

Recently completed highrise buildings. I find it interesting that the NYC tower seems to have higher average floor height than the Chinese buildings. — Per elevatorworld and skyscraper center. My reading list is highly diverse!

Working on a new term for housing, the “Lump of Land” fallacy. Analysis that implicitly assumes that plots of land are interchangeable. Examples: - Zoned Capacity => Not zoning constrained: Wrong - “If we don’t upzone, housing goes to suburbs”: Correct, but bad for welfare

The rise of the ADU (Ancillary Dwelling Unit) in NYC

There's two Manhattans. Let's look at the housing pipeline throughout the last decade: - New building construction: ⬇️ - Office-to-resi (=Alt=Alteration CO): ⬆️

Do you want to find out how NYC developers split up projects to satisfy the 485-x rules? 99+99+x. I've got a new feature for you: Projects, with a handy "99-unit" toggle (link below) Just look at these unit counts! citytracker.ai/projects

The problem with 485-x in NYC: We want housing and we want X: High wages, stabilized rent, etc. X doesn't happen on its own. So let's mandate X above 100 units But now we get ... 99 units: - Still no X - Less housing

In NYC, how many applications for new buildings propose exactly 99 units? This did not happen before 2024. March 2026 saw a new record: 11 buildings just that month! (link to filings below) Why 99? 485-x, which increases requirements above 100 units.

Helpful reminder for NYC zoning: When you have a district like "M1-6/R10", you calculate the FAR for that district by dividing the FAR of the numerator district by the FAR of the denominator district. This holds for all zoning parameters except front yards.

Now live as a beta release (link below): Rank your NYC facade! Inspired by Facademash facade.chrisgoldammer.com

Thanks for this question, NYTimes! Let's find out! Number of parks: 2,058 Total Streets length in city: 6,258 miles Street length inside parks: 105.1 miles Parks with roads in them: 266

I enjoy the NY state legislation trick of having special rules for cities in NY above 1M people. What could these cities be? And this will really mess up planning in Buffalo if that city quadruples in size!

Who has the best house? Find your NYC favorite! Coming in a few days.

March 2026 was a big month for NYC project filings: New buildings: +9,108 units With office-to-resi: 10K That's 3x the average since 2021. Biggest building: 1,458 units at 548 W 36th St, many buildings over 100 units.

NY is considering SEQRA reform. If you’re unsure about whether reform is needed, I urge you to … *read* environmental reports for new housing. It’ll radicalize you. For most reports, a huge part of them is either obvious, irrelevant, or counterproductive. (Thread)

How do Office-to-resi conversions work in practice? Let's just look at some floor plans from 1740 Broadway (421 units)

One comment I get: “If we upzoned NYC, rents fall and developers won’t build when rents fall” This misses a key point: Returns for new development aren’t decided by the *overall* rent. You pick high-return areas: E.g. 10 stories in Hells Kitchen at >>$1,000/sqft. Right now, you're not allowed to!

In NYC, the Floor-Area-Ratio (FAR) tells us how much floor space you're allowed to create. Is NYC constrained by FAR? To evaluate, let's ask if new buildings max this out. Yes! >50% of all filings for big buildings are within 3% of the max.

Report on Local Law 11 in NYC. Everyone agrees! But I might have a different definition of what "works" means.

Great article that gives you an idea of how much of what we see is restricted by the many dimensions of the zoning code. You get lots of local lore alongside zoning knowledge. Also, subscribe to Daniel's newsletter. It's worth it!

In housing, rules have been ridiculous for so long that it's easy to forget *how* ridiculous they are. For NYC, a commonly mentioned pro-housing fact: We have “by-right” zoning. If the zoning code allows, you can build something. But … how bizarre that this isn’t true everywhere!

Who's working with who in NYC real estate? Based on DOB NOW Filings, which gives us the applicant (blue) and the filing company (orange).

New blog post: NYC micro-apartments -- the beginning With City-of-Yes (COY), we enabled building denser housing, with apartments <680 sqft on average. And now, this is (slowly) happening. This starts a series, where I'll look into how COY affects NYC housing. blog.citytracker.ai/nyc-micro-ap...

Did City-of-Yes enable micro-units? Chart shows units filed for buildings with <680 sqft/unit in Manhattan + DT Brooklyn Before COY: Not allowed, 0 units After COY: >800 units since 2025. *Promising*, but only 4 buildings so far. The chart just happens to look nice.

You like nicely formatted maps of NYC? I've put them online in higher quality, up to 30MB. All the boroughs, all the colors. citytracker.ai/images/city_...

Why do I talk about ADUs so much? It's only been 100 units so far? Estimates are that City of Yes might yield 80K new units over 15 years. About 25%-50% is expected to come from ADUs! And I don't just trust city-provided estimates, i run own analysis: blog.zonedinsights.com/how-much-hou...

I like street redesign projects. But … we need to see effective government that can implement things, *quickly*. We shouldn’t just accept this: 1. 24 months for the study 2. More review before we build 3. Only then we build (or maybe get sued or blocked) www.timeout.com/newyork/news...

Max Floor-Area-Ratio in NYC, block by block. The median FAR in NYC is 1.0

When people say "X is full", they often mean "parcels have buildings on them already". But we can grow further! How does this work in practice? In NYC (that's just where I have data), new buildings increase height over previous building by 2x-4x.

NYC Density = Building Area / Block Area The other four boroughs (Restricting to biggest contiguous landmass for each borough)

Front setback in a new developments in Brooklyn. This is what our zoning does!

Manhattan Density = Building Area / Block area Total, Residential, Non-Residential

NYC car traffic prediction at the lot level, V0.1 Your position on a block matters. Avenues vs Streets matter. And 42nd St is bad.

Organizing Manhattan (corrected). 1. Align the borough 2. Align rectangular blocks 3. Compress Creates lots of new interstitial greenspaces.