IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fednep/97155.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Flexibility and Conversions in New York City's Housing Stock: Building for an Era of Rapid Change

Author

Listed:

Abstract

Post-COVID, New York City faces reduced demand for commercial space in its central business districts, even as residential demand is resurgent. Just as in past eras of New York’s history, conversion of commercial spaces into housing may help the city adapt to these new market conditions and provide an additional pathway for producing badly needed housing. If 10 percent of office and hotel spaces were converted to residential use, around 75,000 homes would be created, concentrated in Midtown Manhattan. However, there are considerable obstacles to such conversions, including a slew of regulatory barriers. Allowing greater flexibility in building uses—including by reducing the distinction between short- and long-term use and rethinking the separation of uses embedded in the city’s zoning code—could help facilitate these shifts.

Suggested Citation

  • Ingrid Gould Ellen & Noah M Kazis, 2023. "Flexibility and Conversions in New York City's Housing Stock: Building for an Era of Rapid Change," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 29(2), pages 53-74, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fednep:97155
    DOI: 10.59576/epr.29.2.53-74
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2023/EPR_2023_nyc-housing_ellen.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.59576/epr.29.2.53-74?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christian A. L. Hilber & Wouter Vermeulen, 2016. "The Impact of Supply Constraints on House Prices in England," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(591), pages 358-405, March.
    2. Glaeser, Edward L. & Ward, Bryce A., 2009. "The causes and consequences of land use regulation: Evidence from Greater Boston," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 265-278, May.
    3. Saks, Raven E., 2008. "Job creation and housing construction: Constraints on metropolitan area employment growth," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 178-195, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christian A. L. Hilber, 2017. "The Economic Implications of House Price Capitalization: A Synthesis," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 45(2), pages 301-339, April.
    2. Ganong, Peter & Shoag, Daniel, 2017. "Why has regional income convergence in the U.S. declined?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 76-90.
    3. Molloy, Raven & Nathanson, Charles G. & Paciorek, Andrew, 2022. "Housing supply and affordability: Evidence from rents, housing consumption and household location," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    4. Gyourko, Joseph & Molloy, Raven, 2015. "Regulation and Housing Supply," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 1289-1337, Elsevier.
    5. Lönnroth, Tea & Krigsholm, Pauliina & Falkenbach, Heidi & Oikarinen, Elias, 2024. "Advancing understanding of the linkages between local land policy interventions and the responsiveness of housing supply: Intervention mechanisms in the Finnish context," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    6. Tammy Leonard & Xi Yang & Lei Zhang, 2021. "The impact of land use regulation across the conditional distribution of home prices: an application of quantile regression for group-level treatments," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 66(3), pages 655-676, June.
    7. Sebastian Eichhorn & David Pehlke, 2022. "Unintended effects of regional planning in Germany," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(2), pages 933-950, June.
    8. Ritashree Chakrabarti & Junfu Zhang, 2015. "Unaffordable housing and local employment growth: Evidence from California municipalities," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 52(6), pages 1134-1151, May.
    9. Koster, Hans R.A. & van Ommeren, Jos & Volkhausen, Nicolas, 2021. "Short-term rentals and the housing market: Quasi-experimental evidence from Airbnb in Los Angeles," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    10. Christian A. L. Hilber, 2019. "Immobilienpreise und Immobilienzyklen und die Rolle von Angebotsbeschränkungen [The impact of local supply constraints on house prices and price dynamics]," Zeitschrift für Immobilienökonomie (German Journal of Real Estate Research), Springer;Gesellschaft für Immobilienwirtschaftliche Forschung e. V., vol. 5(1), pages 37-65, November.
    11. Ehrlich, Maximilian V. & Hilber, Christian A.L. & Schöni, Olivier, 2018. "Institutional settings and urban sprawl: Evidence from Europe," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 4-18.
    12. David Christafore & Susane Leguizamon, 2015. "Spatial Spillovers of Land Use Regulation in the United States," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(3), pages 491-503, June.
    13. H. Spencer Banzhaf & Kyle Mangum, 2019. "Capitalization as a Two-Part Tariff: The Role of Zoning," NBER Working Papers 25699, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Christian A. L. Hilber & Tracy M. Turner, 2014. "The Mortgage Interest Deduction and its Impact on Homeownership Decisions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 96(4), pages 618-637, October.
    15. Tirthatanmoy Das & Kabir Dasgupta, 2018. "Evaluating the Impact of Mothers' Self-esteem on Early Childhood Home Environment: Evidence from NLSY," Working Papers 2018-03 JEL Classificatio, Auckland University of Technology, Department of Economics, revised Oct 2019.
    16. Huub Ploegmakers & Pascal Beckers & Erwin Van der Krabben, 2018. "The impact of planning intervention on business development: Evidence from the Netherlands," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(14), pages 3252-3273, November.
    17. Hilber, Christian A.L. & Robert-Nicoud, Frédéric, 2013. "On the origins of land use regulations: Theory and evidence from US metro areas," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 29-43.
    18. Paciorek, Andrew, 2013. "Supply constraints and housing market dynamics," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 11-26.
    19. Christian A. L. Hilber & Wouter Vermeulen, 2016. "The Impact of Supply Constraints on House Prices in England," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(591), pages 358-405, March.
    20. Chang-Tai Hsieh & Enrico Moretti, 2019. "Housing Constraints and Spatial Misallocation," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 1-39, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    cities; housing; commercial real estate; Conversion; regulatory barriers; COVID; New York City;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R31 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Housing Supply and Markets
    • R33 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Nonagricultural and Nonresidential Real Estate Markets
    • R38 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Government Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fednep:97155. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Gabriella Bucciarelli (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbnyus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.