Housing Crisis Looming In New York?

Forget young professionals flummoxed by the rental market and down-and-outers sleeping in the parks. A few skeptics are now wondering if a luxury condo boom in Manhattan isn’t another kind of crisis waiting to happen. The boom is fueled by speculation based on the premise that today’s $100 million dollar “unit” will be worth $120 million in a year or two. Or three. So far it’s been infallible and some think there is nothing on the horizon that will undercut it, because these holdings are being used to fill out portfolios, like high-end art, with many of them sitting empty some or all of the time, and that’s a market that arguably has its own logic. The skeptics wonder if it’s sustainable and if the market is being overbuilt. “Unlike Picassos, there is not a finite number of these properties,” says one real estate professor, at Columbia University. Meanwhile, in a trend running counter to most big cities, the number of homeless in New York rose last year “in almost every category: individuals, families and the chronically homeless,” to the point where some middle class people were complaining they couldn’t use their parks.