NEW YORK CITY-"Next year is going to be the best in NYC history," declared Robert Knakal, chairman of Massey Knakal Realty Services during the recent annual real estate conference put on by the Foundation for Accounting Education—a part of the New York State Society of CPAs.
Massey Knakal brokers have been given some unique instructions to prepare for the strong year ahead, Knakal revealed. "We're telling brokers to 'get a lot of rest and cancel your vacations,' because we think next year is going to be unbelievable."
More specifically, he stated, "This year, we will probably see 3,700 to 3,800 trades, with a dollar value of $40 billion. I think next year we'll see more than 5,000, with a value exceeding $62 billion. It's catalyzed by strong real estate demand, plus I think interest rates will stay low.”
Added Robert Freedman, chair, tri-state, Colliers International, "I'm bullish on NY's protean ability to keep morphing. If you'd told me in 1992 that at this time, Tribeca residents would have the same education and income level as the Upper East Side, I would have mocked you unmercifully. And we're doing deals in Midtown South where the rent exceeds that of properties in the Plaza district. We're dealing with an inverted model and I think we're going to see more of these anomalous deals."
Others, though, had dire predictions. "Maybe we're laying the seeds for the next crash, because everything is overpriced," declared Frederic Leffel, president, Kaufman New Ventures. "Today the market is overheated in certain parts of the city."
Still, most of the conference speakers remain upbeat about New York City's future, as well as that of commercial real estate overall.
"We will bring 1,500 condominium units to market in the next two years in Manhattan," said Laurie Golub, general counsel and COO, HFZ Capital Group. "It's easiest to stay in a market you know where you can take a taxi to see your site and fix a problem. We look a lot at the boroughs, but rents are better in Manhattan, so nowhere else makes as much sense to us."
Added Michael Brenner, CFO, EVP and director, the Related Companies, "We like cities, we like to see activity and a job market. We're in an environment where interest rates are low and demand in residential as good as it's ever been. We're at a perfect point in the cycle."
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Rayna Katz
Rayna Katz is a seasoned business journalist whose extensive experience includes coverage of the lodging sector, travel and the culinary space. She was most recently content director for a business-to-business publisher, overseeing four publications. While at Meeting News, a travel trade publication, she received a Best Reporting award for a story on meeting cancellations in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
