The grass isn't greener in the suburbs

From the Real Deal:

High property taxes are virtually inescapable for people living within commuting distance of New York—and the new tax law will make this burden even worse.

Nine of the 10 counties in the U.S. with the highest average property tax bills from 2017 were in the New York City suburbs, with Westchester topping the list at $17,179, according to Bloomberg. The sole exception was Marin County in California, where the average bill was $11,295.

New York’s Rockland County took the number two spot, while Nassau County landed at number five. Connecticut’s Fairfield County was number eight, and the rest of the spots all went to counties in New Jersey: Essex, Bergen, Union, Morris and Passaic.

New 421a may not help housing market

From Crains:

Finally a deal has been reached to restore the controversial 421-a tax break (excuse me, it is now known as the Affordable New York Housing Program), and the expectation is that it will ignite a boom in residential construction. Well, maybe.

At first glance the numbers support the idea that developers have been in a holding pattern since the tax break expired in late 2015. As the graph shows, building permits accelerated during the recovery from the financial crisis and then soared in 2015 as builders rushed to get approvals before the tax break lapsed. Last year permits fell by 70%, and so far this year we are on pace to issue about 20,000. The city needs more housing than that.

The common theme seems to be that builders have misjudged the incomes of the millennials who have flooded to big cities for jobs in the so-called creative economy. These young people simply can't afford the rents, and the impact is spreading from New York to other thriving cities. San Francisco rents have dropped 5% in the past nine months. Vacancy rates are rising even in Denver and other booming cities. Because development of an apartment building takes several years, a big jump in supply is coming in New York and around the country—further pressuring rents.

Beyond the immediate crunch, demographers are beginning to question how long millennial commitment to city living will last.

A survey released this year showed that young people still want to move to the suburbs. I know two such people (yes, they are journalists) who each plan eventually to leave Brooklyn for a single-family house in a suburb with good schools. One is staying for now because universal prekindergarten is cheaper than preschool in Westchester, but she's still checking the Westchester houses for sale and saving her money.

More Americans moving to New York

From the Daily News:

New York is still attracting those who yearn to breathe free — but now our immigrants are often American. The city’s population gains are due in part to “domestic migrants” who flock here, according to city records.

The push from other regions comes as arrivals of foreign immigrants have declined. The number of Americans who moved to New York City has increased from around 60,000 in 2000 to 80,000 in 2010, Joseph Salvo, director of the City Planning Department’s Population Division, said. These homegrown immigrants skew younger than the traditional non-American newcomers and tend to live in “non-family households,” either alone or with roommates.

“Aspiring young people are coming to the city, seeking out opportunity,” Salvo said.

Among them is Claire Bunkers, 21, an aspiring human rights worker, who moved here in 2012.

“There’s more opportunity here,” said the Santa Ana, Calif., native, who hopes to work at the United Nations. Bunkers, who lives in Ridgewood, Queens, first fell for big-city life at age 11.

“After the first time I saw New York, that was it,” she said. “It was the coolest place in the world. We stayed in a suite in a hotel. We ate Indian food.”

LIC: A true "bedroom" community

From Crains:

Nearby on Vernon Boulevard, the neighborhood's longtime main drag, business is good, although well below levels many predicted all the new development would bring. Some fault the East Coast folks for keeping to themselves too much and exploring their new neighborhood too little.

"They're too transient," said Donna Drimmer, owner of Matted, a gallery and framing shop. "Most of them come from Manhattan, and they still spend their time there, before they eventually move to the suburbs."

That's funny. All we've been hearing about these past 10 years or so is that the Great American City has been reborn and that no one is moving out to the suburbs anymore. So much for that. I guess people still want trees and backyards in the long run and not soulless self-contained micro-communities that sell to buyers hooked on the idea that they'll never have to leave the confines of their overpriced condos and mingle with the unwashed masses except to commute one stop to Manhattan. This is why we keep hearing, "It's still up-and-coming, but just wait until the next development opens!" The charm that drew people to LIC was destroyed by greed and has been reduced to a temporary stop on the way to greener pastures. Great job, city planners!

More Catholic schools closing

From Crains:

In little more than two months, St. Raphael School in Long Island City, Queens, will close, and a new chapter will begin for the 160 students, from nursery school to eighth grade, who must find alternatives, as well as for the neighborhood that the school has served for the past half century.

“If your business isn't viable and you have no other sources of income, you have to close,” said Stefanie Gutierrez, press secretary for the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, which covers Kings and Queens counties. St. Raphael will just become one of the latest victims of falling enrollments and rising costs, that in its own case was expected to leave it with a $200,000 deficit this year, despite the diocese and parents all chipping in.

The picture is much the same at Corpus Christi School in nearby Woodside, which will also close its doors in June, as it was for two other parochial schools that have closed in the area in the past decade.

In fact, the school office set up open houses at other parochial schools in Long Island City, Astoria, Maspeth and Woodside, and helped to get St. Raphael's students priority for enrollment. But with fewer classrooms for the same number of students, some of the more popular schools already have waiting lists.

All of the students, however, will lose the opportunity to attend schools in their own neighborhoods. But the diocese insists it has no choice in the face of the thinning ranks of Catholics in Brooklyn and Queens—currently about 1.4 million, down 200,000 in just the past 10 years, as many Irish, Italian and Eastern European families have decamped for the suburbs.

“There's definitely been a demographic shift, but there's still a demand for Catholic education,” said Ms. Gutierrez. She noted, for example, recent waves of Catholic immigrants from Latin America and Asia. Many of them, however, are not able to afford tuitions that have risen steeply in recent years, as the priests and nuns have been replaced at the blackboard by lay teachers who require higher salaries and better benefits.

In the meantime, we have this: Queens kindergarten waiting lists up at zoned schools