4) NYC's high prices mean multifamily opportunity.
If dinner tonight is a 25¢ packet of ramen in order to meet rent at your Williamsburg walk-up, you might want to look across the Hudson. Multifamily rents are discounted as much as 40% to NYC’s residential strongholds. There’s never been a greater price discrepancy between urban areas and ring communities (think Downtown vs Hoboken), says DSF Group prez Joshua Solomon. NYC prices are why his Boston-based company is finding value in investing in NJ. Christopher adds that transit-oriented sites are ideal for folks working Downtown.
Same goes for Boston-based Intercontinental Real Estate Corp, which is building 140 units at 900 Monroe in Hoboken in a JV with Bijou Properties. The firm's director of acquisitions Michael Keyes says the only hard part about building residential is underwriting ground-floor retail. “You can’t have Whole Foods anchor every project.” (We can only dream.) 900 Monroe’s retail space, luckily, is pre-leased to a daycare. “We’re going after the stroller crowd,” he says. (Proof that Park Slope doesn’t have a monopoly on Bugaboos.)
