The Adams administration released a ton of housing production numbers today. Here’s what they mean.
The mayor on Friday announced that since he entered office, the city has created, preserved or planned 426,800 homes.
That number includes 95,100 units created, 134,700 preserved and 197,000 planned units since 2022.
“Created” includes 45,900 apartments financed by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. That means these are units where public financing has closed, not where construction has necessarily been completed yet.
Another 46,900 market rate units — that involve some kind of HPD assistance — are included in the “created” figure, as are 2,300 units that are being converted from office space as part of the city’s Office Conversion Accelerator.
“Preserved” includes 40,100 apartments preserved through HPD financing that are subject to agency regulatory agreements. Another 78,500 units reflect stabilization programs that are not subject to regulatory agreements.
The administration also counts 12,400 public housing units that are being converted to Section 8 housing through the Permanent Affordability Commitment Together, or PACT, program, as well as 3,700 units through the Comprehensive Modernization program.
“Planned” includes the 82,000 units that are projected to be built over the next 15 years, thanks to zoning changes made as part of the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity. It also includes housing units expected to be built as a result of five neighborhood rezonings, and another 3,000 units that will be built at the defunct Flushing Airport — which the mayor announced this week — and other city-owned sites where the city is still working to find a developer.
Finally, the number includes any state projects where the city has a central role, such as the Brooklyn Marine Terminal. The latest plan called for 6,000 housing units, but the project is still being negotiated by a task force that has not been able to agree to terms that would allow that development to move forward. The task force has already shaved thousands of housing units from the project’s projected total.
That is the tricky thing about planned units. Nothing is guaranteed and in many cases, these projections rely on factors outside the city’s control. Neighborhood rezonings, and the zoning changes under City of Yes, rely on developer appetite. We’ve seen that that appetite is not always as voracious as predicted.
Mayor Eric Adams has been putting a lot of emphasis on planned units lately. You’ve probably heard the mayor mention that his is the most pro-housing administration ever seen by the city.
He’s also said that his administration will build “more housing in one term than [in] the 12 years under Bloomberg [and] the eight years under de Blasio combined.” (Erik Engquist did a fact check on this last week.)
What he meant by that is his administration plans to generate more housing than those previous administrations, based on the zoning changes his administration has made, including City of Yes and the five neighborhood rezonings. Those projected units will not be built during his first term, and won’t all be built during a second term, should there be one. It’s also not clear if those projected totals will ultimately hold up.
Numbers provided by city officials note that zoning tools under the Bloomberg and de Blasio administrations were projected to net 101,584 units, total. Again, these are all projections.
Still, these zoning changes clear a path for tens of thousands of housing units that otherwise could not be built.
On Friday, the administration released its fiscal year 2025 housing production numbers. In the past year, HPD financed the creation or preservation of 28,281 units of affordable housing, which is 11 percent more than the previous year. Of that 13,361 were new and 14,920 were preservation units.
The preservation levels are the highest seen during the Adams administration. That’s because HPD’s preservation financing team was gutted during the pandemic. The number of housing units preserved through HPD financing has rebounded, according to administration officials, and is closer to pre-pandemic levels.
What we’re thinking about: Will the Second Circuit side with REBNY in its continued fight against the FARE Act? Send a note to kathryn@therealdeal.com.
A thing we’ve learned: In fiscal year 2025, 6,860 units received the property tax break J-51. The previous year, that number was 10,954.
Elsewhere in New York…
— Mayor Eric Adams’ re-election campaign submitted at least 52 forged or fraudulently obtained signatures on a petition to qualify for the November ballot as an independent candidate, Gothamist reports. The number of problematic signatures may be much higher; the fraudulent signatures identified by Gothamist were collected by at least nine workers who collectively submitted more than 5,000 signatures.
— Funerals were held this week for the Blackstone exec Wesley LePatner, Rudin associate Julia Hyman and NYPD Det. Didarul Islam, among the four victims of Monday’s Midtown office shooting, along with security guard Aland Etienne, CBS News reported.
— On Monday, Blackstone will reopen its New York headquarters in the building where the shooting took place. It will give employees the option to work remotely for the week, according to Bloomberg.
Closing Time
Residential: The top residential deal recorded Friday was $17.7 million for 246 West 12th Street. The West Village townhouse is 5,000 square feet and last sold on the market in 2018 for $8.9 million. Douglas Elliman’s Christopher Riccio and Elana Zinoman have the listing.
Commercial: The top commercial deal recorded was $18.4 million for 63-36 98th Place. The Rego Park co-op building has 66 units and is 67,000 square feet.
New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $29 million for a penthouse unit at 988 Fifth Avenue. The new construction condo on the Upper East Side is a duplex, 6,000-square-foot unit. The Corcoran Group’s Leighton Candler, Jennifer Reardon and Rachel Brandeis have the listing.
Breaking Ground: The largest new building application filed was for a proposed 249,629-square-foot, 12-story building at 401 West 19th Street. Manish Chadha of Ismael Leyva Architects is the applicant of record.
— Joseph Jungermann
