Real Estate
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‘Failures happen during construction’: Office-to-residential conversions are all over NYC, but failures usually get fixed before they get worse
The building at the center of this week’s Midtown scare is the former Pfizer world headquarters at 235 East 42nd Street: a 33-story tower built in 1960 that, alongside its neighbor at 219 East 42nd, is being converted by Metro Loft and David Werner Real Estate Investments into roughly 1,600 apartments, the largest office-to-residential conversion…
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Gen Z and millennials aren’t convinced the American Dream exists anymore: Only 40% of them can afford to buy a home
For as long as the American Dream has been around, homeownership was considered an intractable piece of the wealth-building puzzle. For many young people in the U.S. nowadays, however, just the idea of one day owning a home is a dream. After speaking dourly about the housing market for years, young Americans are now changing…
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Harvard’s housing report has a darker message than affordability—the middle-class home was always a historical accident
A new Harvard study documents a housing market in crisis. But its real argument is more unsettling: the era when an ordinary American could expect to own a home may have been the exception—not the rule. For half a century, Harvard has been writing versions of the same warning. In 1977, researchers at what was…
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The 30-year fixed mortgage was supposed to be predictable. Two costs quietly broke that promise
Potential homebuyers tend to agonize over two things: mortgage rates and home prices. But that’s not where the burden of homeownership ends. It’s really just the beginning. Buyers will lock in a rate, sign at closing, and assume the hard part of buying a house is over, but many things can go wrong, and there…
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Congress just passed the most significant housing bill in decades, so why won’t Trump sign it?
A sprawling legislative package aimed at lowering the cost of housing and spurring more home construction won bipartisan approval from Congress this week, but it’s hit a major roadblock in becoming law: President Donald Trump. The White House supported the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, but on Wednesday Trump canceled the signing ceremony for…
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A big look at the state of housing in America: Boomers won’t sell, millennials can’t buy, and Gen Z gets to watch the whole thing sort itself out
Since the pandemic, hopeful homebuyers have grown accustomed to a certain narrative: An inventory squeeze and swathes of homeowners unwilling to move means demand for housing has vastly outpaced the supply of available homes. It’s a dynamic that could soon be put into reverse by the same demographic pressures transforming every other part of the…
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Texas and Charlotte used to build huge McMansions—now they’re copying the California design tricks they once mocked
Just as Gen Z is resurfacing the Tuscan Mom and McMansion aesthetics of the aughts, the harsh reality is that new homes are actually getting smaller and more expensive. The average new home in America is now 2,175 square feet, a 5.6% decline from the peak reached in February 2019, according to a new report…
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The new problem for millennial parents in the Northeast: the million-dollar starter home
They waited out the pandemic boom. They saved longer, rented longer, delayed longer, and watched the typical first-time homebuyer age climb to a record 40. Now, the buyers who did everything right are running into a new problem: The Northeast just became the fastest-growing region for million-dollar starter homes in the country. It’s especially imperfectly…
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A ChatGPT prompt almost killed Ryan Serhant’s $50 million NYC penthouse deal. Here’s how he saved it
AI can drudge up untrustworthy sources or just feel kind of “off,” but the technology has also been pretty consequential for some business owners. In fact, celebrity real estate agent Ryan Serhant said at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference last week that ChatGPT nearly blew a $50 million deal for his firm. When asked by Fortune’s…
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The Sun Belt boom is over. Midwest real-estate investors say ‘I told you so’
Pick up any real estate publication over the last decade and you’d see the same cities on the cover: Austin. Phoenix. Tampa. Charlotte. Americans relocated there by the thousands, companies went on hiring binges, rents were climbing fast, and every investor with a slide deck was calling it the future of American real estate. The…