July 23, 2008
Revenues at Stuyvesant Town are Down
The NY Times reports analysis of Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village finances shows revenues for the huge complex dropped last year. And that's in spite of Stuyvesant Town owner Tishman Speyer converting 560 rent-regulated units into market-rate units!
Or maybe it's because of the conversion. When Tishman Speyer paid $5.4 billion for the complex, its plan was to increase profitability by increasing the number of market-rate units. However, there have been legal costs associated with trying to push out rent-regulated tenants (of course). And then there are the reports of hundreds of vacancies in the buildings, due to the soft real estate market, prompting new marketing strategies to attract market-rate tenants.
The Times article then looks at the tensions between rent-regulated tenants and Tishman Speyer; while tenants feel they are being unduly harassed, the management company says it has only been trying to crack down on people abusing the system (those with other homes they reside in, for instance). Lux Living, a blog critical of Stuyvesant Town, suggests that Waterside Plaza has been trying to appeal to the huddled masses escaping Stuy Town--and why not, if NYU students living in Stuy Town really are throwing themselves at pressurized walls! Still, some new tenants are very happy there.
| 
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
email this
add to facebook
add to del.icio.us
[ report this ]
i love it when greedy people don't get their way.
[ report this ]
really? no kidding... i wonder why?
[ report this ]
Serves them right. 3k a month for a one bedroom apartment in stuy town is a bit nutty.
[ report this ]
Man, you pay that much money to live in the white people projects?
[ report this ]
"Greed is good".
Good for Tishman Speyer.
[ report this ]
i just moved in to a converted 2 bedroom for $2775/month on the southeast quadrant. For the first year, we got 1 month free rent. plus no brokers fee. and we used a resident referral program ($500 to the resident, $500 to us. so contact me if you're moving in). we were able to sign a 2 year lease and lock in on the next years rent increase at a lower rate than the market.
the facilities are well kept, new appliances (including a dishwasher), marble countertops, ac, elevators, laundry & bike rack in building, quiet outdoor parks all around (without sketchy guys trying to sell me shit), etc. and they serve their residents really well. when our toilet broke down, they fixed it in an hour.
when i was searching for apartments, the comparable finds were much more expensive. right now i'm paying about $200 more than my upper east side apartment from 3 years ago, and $50 less than my hells kitchen apartment last year.
moral of the story, i love stuy town.
[ report this ]
I wouldn't be too pressed at this point. It is HIGHLY unlikely that they made their business case on a 1-2 year forecast. The curve for the cash flows on the property can dip a bit in the first few years without significantly extending the payback period, not to mention the option value of the location/land itself.
From the Times article:
"But after the company paid $5.4 billion, real-estate analysts estimated that it would be six to eight years before the complexes would break even."
Move along folks, there's nothing to see here.
[ report this ]
That shit is a rip-off. They want to attract new tenants, how about lowering the rent to something reasonable. There's your fucking marketing strategy.
[ report this ]
$5.4 billion and they still can't put some nice facades on those buildings. Some of the most banal and hideous architecture in Manhattan. For Pete's sake, throw some EIFS cladding on those buildings!
[ report this ]
That's that 'block and fill' construction from the 1940's.( Robert Moses's personal fave!) It's hard for me to imagine anyone paying so much for this crap, even if it is in a (now) killer location. Completely stripped of the bricks and blocks and heavily glazed, these towers would barely evince a yawn. I don't get it...but what about this deal does anybody get?
[ report this ]
I can't believe gothamist hasn't said anything about this yet... Stuy Town has actually stopped letting people put up pressurized walls. Apparently they're illegal and have always been illegal and someone finally reported them. Meanwhile, there are about 150 tenants who moved in and have converted bedrooms on their leases and haven't had them installed yet.
Moral of the story: without the converted bedrooms, very few people will be able to afford market-rate apartments in Stuy Town and Tishman Speyer most definitely won't make any money.
[ report this ]
Yeah the converted bedrooms are key because other wise there is no way most of the people who are moving in can afford the rents unless they have more people living there than there are bedrooms.