Expansion of Condos

Queens is getting 60 big residential projects  

Expansion out of Manhattan and Brooklyn

We have all seen the recent expansion of condos into the Queens area within the past couple years.  These new developments are popping up along the Long Island City waterfront as more and more people are leaving Manhattan and Brooklyn to find cheaper rent and a more residential feel.  One may begin to ask how will this affect the life style of Queens?  Will this influx of condos and rentals change Queens?  We decided to check out the Real Deal Magazine and see what they had to say of this vast expansion.

"New York City’s new development activity has long been focused on popular neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn. But with home prices on the rise in Queens, some major Manhattan developers are now venturing into the borough for the first time.
Builders like the World-Wide Group, the Lightstone Group, L+M Development and Property Markets Group are building massive rental towers in Queens, most of them in rapidly developing Long Island City.

Statistics on Queens’ new development are hard to come by, since the city’s largest brokerage firms don’t track transactions in the borough. But over the next three years, Queens is slated to see the construction of more than 8,000 units of new residential housing, according to estimates from the brokerage Aptsandlofts.com. That figure is a big increase from the immediate aftermath of the recession, brokers said, and it’s roughly on par with the pace of building in Manhattan, where approximately 5,350 new rental and condo units are expected to come online in the next 24 months, according to data from new development marketing firm Corcoran Sunshine.
...
Developers are increasingly drawn to Queens — and especially Long Island City — because large development sites are still available there. Plus, home prices are rising as new restaurants and stores appear, said Mitchell Hochberg, president of Lightstone, which is currently leasing its 12-story, 199-unit Gantry Park Landing project in Long Island City.

Relying on rentals
Most of the major new developments in Queens right now are rentals, which developers see as the best fit for the neighborhood’s somewhat-transient population of young professionals, Hochberg said. But it’s also due to the recent increase in rents in the area.
For example, the median monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in a doorman building in Long Island City increased from $2,825 in 2011 to $2,890 in 2012, according to data from marketing firm Nancy Packes." (The Real Deal Magazine, Katherine Clarke)


http://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/development-kings-head-for-queens/