Mayor Bill De Blasio made affordable housing a centerpiece of his administration. The confluence of cosmopolitan capital and terrible timing has done the impossible: It’s created a vacancy problem in a city where thousands of people are desperate to find places to live.ĭerek Thompson: When a promotion leads to divorceįrom any rational perspective, what New York needs isn’t glistening three-bedroom units, but more simple one- and two-bedroom apartments for New York’s many singles, roommates, and small families. Despite pressure from nervous lenders, developers have been reluctant to slash prices too suddenly or dramatically, lest the market suddenly clear and they leave millions on the table. It didn’t help that the Treasury Department cracked down on attempts to launder money through fancy real estate. Developers bet huge on foreign plutocrats-Russian oligarchs, Chinese moguls, Saudi royalty-looking to buy second (or seventh) homes.īut the Chinese economy slowed, while declining oil prices dampened the demand for pieds-à-terre among Russian and Middle Eastern zillionaires. They were also made for foreigners with tens of millions of dollars to spare. What happened? While real estate might seem like the world’s most local industry, these luxury condos weren’t exclusively built for locals. Today, nearly half of the Manhattan luxury-condo units that have come onto the market in the past five years are still unsold, according to The New York Times. From 2011 to 2019, the average price of a newly listed condo in New York soared from $1.15 million to $3.77 million.īut the bust is upon us. These colossal stalagmites initially transformed not only the city’s skyline but also the real-estate market for new homes. Even as 80,000 people sleep in New York City’s shelters or on its streets, Manhattan residents have watched skinny condominium skyscrapers rise across the island. Such is the tale of two cities within America’s largest metro. Finally, we've found a place where we're in no hurry to move.In Manhattan, the homeless shelters are full, and the luxury skyscrapers are vacant. Wouldn't it be great to move there, get something bigger, better?' Right now we feel we can just stay put-and it's a good feeling. "In New York you're always looking at real estate, looking for your next place. "They love it," reports their mother, praising the virtue of an apartment boasting "two different living areas off the main one-so the kids have their space, we ours." She pauses. Their two children, meanwhile, the couple's reason for vacating downtown-"There's no grass in SoHo," chuckles Sherman Meloni, "and we wanted them to grow up by the park"-are thrilled with their new digs. "And being a painter, it's hard to find another artist's work I want to live with." "I'm her biggest fan," the actor says of Sherman, whose oils "are mostly realistic, figurative pieces." "My husband keeps waiting for me to paint something that I'll agree to hang up," she explains. When it comes to art, though the couple have begun collecting, Christopher Meloni has yet to hang a large work from his favorite artist-his wife. The bed frame, veneered in the same ebony as the bookcases, provides a visual partition as well as privacy if you're actually in bed." Because there's a giant open archway, you can see out our bedroom window from the front of the library. "It's like two unenclosed rooms, very open to each other," she explains. "First I mirrored the walls, then put blue glass on top so when the light hits it, it reflects through the glass, causing the wall to glow, like it's lit."Īs for the library and master bedroom-done in dark caramels and browns-Sherman Meloni combined the two into one large space, separated only by the bed's headboard. "I don't cook a lot, so I wanted ours to be not just a kitchen but another nice, inviting, warm room, which is why I continued using the wood-there are cherrywood backsplashes-and color," namely, in the exotic blue walls. "It's hard finding a beautiful kitchen where you just want to spend time," she says. Christopher Meloni lives with his wife, Sherman, and their two children in a Manhattan highrise.
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