Residential Construction in New York City Lags
By LAURA KUSISTO and ELIOT BROWN
Residential construction in the city has been slow to rebound after the recession, posing an obstacle to the de Blasio administration's goal to leverage the real-estate market to build 80,000 apartments for low- and middle-income families.
In contrast to other major U.S. cities, the number of units authorized in New York City through building permits remains well below levels before the market crashed in late 2008, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures.
In New York, permits for 17,995 new housing units were issued in 2013, slightly more than half the nearly 34,000 units authorized in 2008 and below the number approved for 2002.
By comparison, builders are busier than they've been in years in many other major cities where rents and housing prices have been growing. San Francisco, one of the hottest markets in the country in the past few years, issued permits for about 4,500 units in 2013, nearly double those authorized in 2005. Washington, D.C., Seattle and Boston, among others, are also above precrash levels.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/residential-construction-in-new-york-city-lags-1407720062
