New Condos in Lower Manhattan

One of the things that accompanies a neighborhood renaissance like we’ve seen over the past few years in lower Manhattan is the influx of new condos and condo conversions. Buildings that were once full of commercial tenants (so many of whom left after 9/11) are now being converted into residential housing.

Here's 75 Wall:


And here's 15 William Street, otherwise (and borderline inappropriately) known as the William Beaver House:

A quote from the New York real estate gossip blog Curbed puts it best:

"The [William Beaver House] sales office, slated to open November 20, will serve up apartments from $890,000 for a one-bedroom to $2.5 million for the penthouse with terrace, which if you're going to be serious about this whole impress-your-junior-Goldman colleagues thing, is really the only way to go."

What a flawless way to put it.

It’s almost laughable to see so much new building and so many conversions down here. And I'm not even counting all of the new buildings going up west of here in Battery Park City. It seems like every third building is doing a conversion. And of course, this being the Wall Street area and all, these conversions are all going high-end, usually with trendy (and deliberately poorly-lit) lobbies like this:

This neighborhood used to have fairly reasonable rents at least for Manhattan. But even the more affordable buildings down here (for example, rents at 2 Gold Street are up some 30-35% from when the building first opened to tenants back in 2005) are quickly catching up to the rest of the city.

Another example of what I’d call the wrong kind of gentrification.