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Posts Tagged ‘Central Park’

[Three Cents Worth #270 NY] What Is the Value of a Central Park View?

October 30, 2014 | 8:50 pm | | Columns |

It’s time to share my Three Cents Worth (3CW) on Curbed NY, at the intersection of neighborhood and real estate in the capital of the world…and I’m here to take measurements.

Check out my 3CW column on @CurbedNY:

While there is an obsession with views in the Manhattan market and it is one of the drivers of the tall tower phenomenon, there are a bunch of moving parts associated with it. We looked at the last two years of closed sales (to get enough data) on the four borders of Central Park, comparing the average price per square foot of co-op and condo apartments with direct views of the park—including both those above and below the treeline—and those with city views.

These results, shown in the infographic below, reflect the difference between the view types —but it does not mean that a park view on Fifth Avenue is worth 75.6 percent more than a city view on Fifth Avenue… just because of the view. A key difference between the view types is that the apartments with park views tend to be larger. The average size of a Fifth Avenue sale with a direct park view was 83.2 percent bigger than an apartment without a park view. Manhattan Co-op/Condo Values With and Without Park Views So Manhattan apartment prices on a per square foot basis reflect a significant premium per square foot for larger continuous space. Back to my Fifth Avenue example, the 75.6 percent difference reflects a “double-dip”—park views are more expensive and sell for more per square footage, but they also tend to be larger and therefore sell for more per square foot. Still, it’s a lot more expensive to have a park view than not have a park view.

cpwviews


My latest Three Cents Worth column on Curbed: What Is the Value of a Central Park View? [Curbed]

Three Cents Worth Archive Curbed NY
Three Cents Worth Archive Curbed DC
Three Cents Worth Archive Curbed Miami
Three Cents Worth Archive Curbed Hamptons

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[Video] Steve Witkoff on future of Helmsley Park Lane Hotel

April 15, 2014 | 3:03 pm | |

Daniel Geiger of Crains New York Business interviews well know developer Steve Witkoff on his plans for the Park Lane Hotel, formerly owned by Leona and Harry Helmsley. Steve talks about shadow effect and how he plans to let Vornado discover how deep the top of the market is via their nearby development site on Central Park South.

There has been a lot of discussion about “Billionaires Row” which these developments would be part of.

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Central Park Views Before and After One57

December 3, 2012 | 9:00 am | |

A lot is being made about the value of views these days.

The law of supply and demand is also in force. “If you look at the number of buildings that have a view of Central Park and you look at the shoreline of Manhattan,” Mr. Miller said, “the waterfront is a lot bigger. There’s a much more exclusive nature to having a park view.”

You can be on a very high floor and still lose a significant part of your view amenity as the following photos indicate. Views are nearly always discussed in the context of what is gained rather than what is lost. In NYC, no view is ever guaranteed. These were taken by one of my appraisers from the same spot from a high floor on a building across the street looking directly north over Central Park before and after One57 topped out.

Before

After

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[Central Park v. Detroit] $363,538,692,000 v. $4,500,000

October 26, 2009 | 11:57 pm | |


Source: Google Earth

Back in 2005, I did a fun exercise for New York Magazine – I was asked to value Central Park (just for fun) in about 3 minutes. It was within an article that ranked the reasons to love New York and was item number 3.

The New York Observer recently asked me to update this calculation using the same methodology (in 3 minutes and just for fun) and I came up with $363,538,692,000 which is a far cry from $528,783,552,000. The same disclaimers apply as the original effort, seriously.

To put this in perspective, about 9,000 Detroit properties were auctioned (hat tip WalletPop) with opening bids of $500. Only 20% received bids. The total land area of these properties was equivalent to Central Park. If all 9,000 properties received a bid of $500 (which is probably not far off if you assume the 20% that received bids were over $500 and the rest $0), that represents a total value of $4,500,000.

Thats’s not much of a value and these properties also pull down values around them – plus they are off the tax roll placing more financial burden on existing properties.

Not a good sign
Most of the bidders were investors and vacant land in Detroit equals the entire footprint of Boston.

As much as I love my time spent in Michigan and my relatives there, I believe this is called an economic failure spiral.


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