NEW YORK CITY-A mass exodus of Escape From New York-style proportions may soon be coming to life -- for investors, that is. As the amount of buildable square footage in Manhattan continues to slim down, developers are jumping ship for opportunities in the city’s outer-boroughs – particularly in emerging neighborhoods like the St. George waterfront on Staten Island and Downtown Brooklyn - where land is more plentiful and opportunity for yield is greater, officials from Massey Knakal Realty Services explained during the firm’s third quarter press briefing on Tuesday.

According to research from Property Shark cited by MK, Manhattan has approximately 4% of unimproved land for its total length of 23 square miles, compared to Staten Island, which has 18% of available land across 58 square miles; Queens with 8% and 109 square miles; and Brooklyn at 7% and 71 square miles.

James P. Nelson, a partner at Massey Knakal representing sales in Greenwich Village, NoHo and the East Village, said that number does not match up with the demand for new multifamily product. “Soon what you are going to find that there is hardly any land left in New York City,” he said, at the conference. “When you think about it, there has been so much development over this last cycle, and it was all needed. What saved us in the last cycle was that it was not speculative development. Everything that was built in ’06 and ’07 was absorbed, and the projects being built now can’t keep up with the demand. We are getting to a point where there is nothing left to build in Manhattan.”