By George Capsis
The pandemic has sent office workers home to the suburbs, closing offices and restaurants. New York is now a town that even ghosts (and certainly tourists) decline to visit. Hence, apartment rents are precipitously dropping by 10 to 20%.
In a riveting online briefing, the Chief Operating Officer of Corcoran, Gary Malin, spelled out with mathematical accuracy the current drop in apartment rents which he offers as comparable to the 2008 recession.
Apartment owners are offering two and three month concessions (no rent payments) and even moving costs in an effort to fill the increasing number of vacant apartments.
A neighborhood apartment building owner with 100 apartments has, for the very first time, a 20% vacancy rate.
Malin projects that the slide in real estate rentals will continue through the Christmas season and may not turn around until late spring—and may never be the same as it is now.
This newspaper switched to Zoom production meetings months ago and some companies are not signing new office leases while office workers are required to work from home.
Teddy, my 6’3″ grandson, newly graduated from Holy Cross after a four-year football scholarship, went to work for a cyber security company in Boston only to be sent home to East Williston L.I. to work by phone, and meet a very beautiful girl (keeping workers out of offices may create a whole new culture).
Neighboring states such as New Jersey are benefiting from the precipitous fall in New York occupancies. Rob Norman, Coldwell Banker’s president for New Jersey and Rockland County, New York, sums up the recent surge in NJ real estate: “Rather than picking a town because it’s 10 miles from their office, people are picking a town because it affords them the quality of life they’re wishing for their family. If you could live anywhere in America and still have your same job, where would you choose to live? People get that choice now. And that’s a very unique situation that we haven’t seen before.”
To view the full video, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1r1fxLOxfiU&t=757s
