The current real estate boom is attracting major investment in some of the most unlikely places. Over the last several years large real estate groups, often backed by the deep pockets of Wall Street firms are buying up blocks of rent stabilized buildings in poor neighborhoods such as East Tremont and Highbridge in the Bronx. Even foreign groups have gotten into the game investing in this cheap stock of housing that’s far from luxurious.Big Real Estate Firms Buy Up in Poor Neighborhoods
Photo from WNYC.com
13 comments:
We'd better hope this damn boom stops soon before all buildings slip into the greedy hands of the Wall Street machine. Small time landlords may be slumlords, but they generally ignore their properties and run a pretty loose operation since their mortgages are paid. The new owners will run a much tighter ship , at least until they recuperate the purchase cost from rents, they will be crawling up the backside of every tenant at all times, looking for any small reason to kick them out. The buildings will be fixed up, but NOT for the benefit any of its original tenants. These jokers didn't give a damn about places like the Bronx during the 80s, the communities had to rebuild themselves without any outside help, now these bastards want to literally steal the products of their hard work to make a quick buck. People, we need to tell these politicos and fat cat investors that they are not welcome in our communities.
I was told that the Bleeker Street area in Greenwich Village was bought up by a high end real estate conglomerate composed of 1/2 foreign Euros and 1/2 home grown $$$$$ from those Wall Street boys (out of their high multi million dollar year end bonuses) !!!
Get used to it folks !
They're buying LOW and plan to sell HIGH !
Isn't that the way you're supposed to make a "killing" in the investment market ?
That's standard recommended SOP in any business class that I ever took !!!
Well explains why Queens is a bit slow - why build new crap when you can convert existing crap?
Give those who are still fighting your crap in Queens a few years to thin their ranks. The developers think that time is on their side.
What puzzles me is that these fat cats are buying now? Why didn't they buy in the 80s when most of the buildings in the Bronx were being foreclosed, they could have bought them for NOTHING. It appears that these people are morons who are just following the pack, if they had any foresight they would have bought them up long ago. I wouldn't worry, when the next investment craze comes they will bail out and follow that instead.
#2, nobody downtown is buying 'low,' but they still might make a lot.
#1, the whole thing is riotously fucked, and another example of global oligarchy.
the crux of the matter, i think, is the line "Small time landlords..."
in almost all instances of life, who is better to deal with, a local person or a functionary a corporation or 'investor'?
Highbridge is a terrific neighborhood, btw, tho' not in the ways readers of most 'real estate blogs' care about so i'm not sure this can go 'upscale' any time soon. East Tremont is something else again: superhardcore Latino, and unlikely to change. so while i agree this is all very worrisome, i wonder if, in these completely non-yuppie Bronx neighborhoods, someone overplayed their hand? (which they can easily afford to do, of course & they won't lose money in the long run.)
wwib
Serfdom will be re-emerging next.
Serfdom will be re-emerging next You're absolutely right, with real estate prices breaking the one million dollar mark in some neighborhoods we will never be able to own land, we will always have to rent from the landLORDS.
"Lucio".....
The "fat cats" didn't buy that early because there were no pioneers (like the artists moving into the Mott Haven area in the Bronx) to begin the process of transformation of these rock bottom neighborhoods !
Now that "the arts" have established a "beach head" the second wave (developers) are moving in !
That's what happened on the Lower East Side, SOHO and every previously "depressed" area in NYC !
"Who walk in Brooklyn.....
Relatively speaking "they" are buying low (maybe not in Brooklyn) compared to other blue chip areas in NYC.
The real estate developers' aims are fully transparent .....they're set on driving people out of all those wonderful livable neighborhoods !
Areas like Tremont & Highbridge, if held long enough by the real estate pigs, might wind up being yuppified !
I grew up in the Sound View section (Classon Point) .....so I know the Bronx .
Keep up your great work . Never make it easy for anyone with $$$$$$$ to screw you in your own hood !!!!
thanks to Soundview for the last post, I'd love to talk to you sometime for real. And of course, sure, who knows what can happen as the middle class gets pushed further & further out from 212 & BK & even western Queens.
I can tell you with a good amount of certitude that Mott Haven thing, going on 5+ years, is quite overblown. There are way more studios there than art residents & even they are small in #, with a pretty high attrition rate. We can walk 138th St, Willis Ave, 3rd Ave, 149th etc & think not much except we are in El Barrio. Although Things have changed, mostly for the better it seems more of a immigrant industry thing (& some decent rebuilding efforts) than any art or yuppie hype. (Also, the very high # of projects, poverty rate & pollution will always limit how high Mott Haven, Port Morris, Hunt's Point etc can rise. The construction of that stupid mall by the Bronx Terminal Market will just make things worse with even more traffic.)
on the general idea of landLORDS & the new American serfdom*, i think we're all in angry agreement.
wwib
* you don't see it here so much but on most other boards, people are furiously (& ignorantly) anti-labor, which is an attitude that only enables these sorta trends even more. god forbid a working man or woman gets a little bit more of theirs, right?
I agree....Mott Haven might take a while but these greedy developers are "visionaries" and are in it for the long haul!
Notice how they've changed the name of the subway stop from Mott Haven (the old "MH "is still evident in the old mosaic border decorations) to "138th Street Grand Concourse" ?
I've been to art shows at the "Haven Gallery"and seen bus tours come through the area. One was from Throgg's neck full of suburban looking "White folk".
I think that they were sponsored by the Bronx borough president's office.
"Although Things have changed, mostly for the better it seems more of a immigrant industry thing than any art or yuppie hype."
Change the wording to "things have changed, mostly for the worse" and you have a fair description of western Queens away from the waterfront.
The whole gentrification of the South Bronx is crap. It is all hype to sell papers and get people to buy and sell properties. The truth is the Bronx, and the South Bronx in particular, is becoming the housing of last resort for the poor and newly arrived immigrants. 99.99% of the new arrivals to the Bronx are the poor fleeing all other boroughs or immigrants from impoverished countries. White flight continues in the Bronx, and as a result, the Bronx is becoming darker, poorer, and even more segregated. The future of the Bronx is not a healthy, dynamic, market rate economy, but a holding cell for the city's poor and immigrant population. Don't believe me? Read and learn:
http://www.unhp.org/pdf/ShrinkingAffordability.pdf
Post a Comment