One-bedrooms in New York City may soon go extinct. Or at least become a lot harder to find. According to The Times, developers are beginning to phase one-bedroom apartments out of new buildings in order to maximize profits and recoup their costs faster. Instead, they are focusing on larger, more spacious units for families.
Charles R. Bendit, a chief executive at Taconic Investment Partners, is experimenting with this theory at Tribeca's Sterling Mason development, which Taconic bought in 2012 for $65 million. Shortly after the purchase, the building plans were reconfigured to cut five one-bedrooms, with expanded square-footage in neighboring units. Now, 14 out of 32 units are three-bedrooms.
In Manhattan, where prime lots can cost upwards of $850 per square foot, developers are lured into building larger, more expensive units. So, the demand for one-bedroom apartments hasn't necessarily decreased, but rather, "there is no demand for one-bedrooms at $4,000 a foot, which would make some of these sites feasible," said Jonathan J. Miller, the president of Miller Samuel.
Of course, that means that in less affluent areas where land prices are lower, one-bedrooms remain fairly profitable. For example, at the Edgecombe Parc Condominium project at 456 West 167th Street in Washington Heights, 27 out of 49 units are one-bedrooms.
· "A Scarcity of New One-Bedrooms" [NYT]
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