City allows tech startup company to put a thousand rental mopeds on the streets.

NY Daily News

The number of mopeds on New York City’s streets has nearly doubled overnight thanks to a local startup.

Revel, a Brooklyn-based tech company, on Wednesday deployed 1,000 street-legal electric two-wheelers across Brooklyn and Queens, which can be rented by the minute.

To use them riders must download Revel’s app, snap a photo of their driver’s license and fork over a $19 sign-up fee. After that, they can be rented for 25 cents per minute on top of a $1 base charge.

The mopeds are made by Chinese manufacturer Niu, and top out at just over 30 mph. They are not allowed to be used on bridges, highways or tunnels, and Revel’s owners do not expect people to take them into Manhattan.

The company launched a pilot last July with 68 bikes, limited to the Brooklyn areas of Bushwick, Williamsburg and Greenpoint. Wednesday’s expansion widens that zone to cover areas up to Astoria, down to Red Hook and over to Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant.

By making them more available, Revel’s owners think mopeds will become much more popular in the city.

“We’ve learned that this is a safe operation,” said Revel co-founder Frank Reig, 33. “We’ve had a great track record since we launched.”

While mopeds are less likely to injure pedestrians and cyclists than cars and trucks, research has shown that their riders are just as likely to be killed as motorcyclists.

A 2018 study published in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine looked at emergency room records at the University of Louisville Hospital — it found that riders who were in moped crashes were just as likely to die as those who were in motorcycle crashes.

 Another 2016 study out of moped-crazy Denmark found that 78% of moped accidents were the result of rule-breaking behavior on the part of the rider.

This is going to be a disaster. But with the subways sure to get worse, Citibike suspending the e-motored cycle fleet because of exploding batteries and faulty brakes and now that de Blasio's ferries are as tardy as him, this city is really desperate to fulfill and more concerned with the commuting demands of the hipsters and yuppies that they are willing to compromise the safety of everyone and take up whatever little parking space is left available.

Queens posts highest rental increase in the country

From The Real Deal:

According to this week’s market reports, Queens rents rose by 8.4 percent in August and the number of housing permits in the city rose by 35.6 percent last year.

Queens posted the highest rent hike in the country in August, registering an 8.4 percent year-over-year increase to settle at an average rate of $2,342. This was followed by Phoenix, Arizona, which had the second highest rent increase at 6.8 percent. Manhattan and Brooklyn also registered price hikes of 1.9 percent and 3.9 percent,respectively. The national average rent stood at $1,412, up 3.1 percent from the same month last year. Read the report here.

Don't trust this real estate brokerage!

From PIX11:

Jaclin Osan admits she’s been too trusting.

She responded to an ad on apartments.com and liked a place in Queens. A guy she knew as Jason showed it to her. His real name is actually Joe Chyla. He was associated with a real estate brokerage called Incmobilia. Being so trusting, Jaclin gave Jason a $1,900 deposit. Cash.

But soon afterwards, Jaclin says Jason told her the landlord wanted a year’s rent up front. She decided she wanted her deposit back. Jason/Joe told her Incmobilia had the money. And Incmobilia gave her a run around. She says a woman named Michelle Wiser told her Jason didn’t work for Incmobilia.

So, she got in touch with the head of the company. But it was more run around.

AirBnB makes rents, home prices increase

From the Wall Street Journal:

Could the use of Airbnb increase home prices and rental rates?

A new, not-yet-published working paper suggests the popular home-sharing service might do just that. The researchers looked at rents and home prices in the 100 largest metro areas in the U.S. between 2012 and 2016. They found that a 10% increase in Airbnb listings leads to a 0.39% increase in rents and a 0.64% increase in house prices.

“That may sound minuscule, but between 2012 and 2016, rents rose by about 2.2% annually [on average in the 100 areas], so a 0.39% increase in that context isn’t very small at all,” says Edward Kung, an assistant professor of economics at the University of California Los Angeles and one of the study’s authors. The same is true for home prices, which rose by an average of about 4.8% annually in the 100 areas, he adds.

South Ozone Park landlord engages in rental scam

From PIX11:

Samintra Boodram from Queens went to see the apartment at 117-20 Lincoln St. in South Ozone Park, Queens.

It’s in a multi-family house. She says a man who identified himself as Tony Bacchus, the landlord, showed her the three-bedroom unit.

It was obvious people were living in the apartment. The landlord told her the tenants lease was nearly up and urged her to put down a $2,000 security deposit. She did. A week later he asked for another $2,000 in cash for the first month’s rent. She paid that, too.

Sumintra says the landlord told her she could move in August 17, after he had fixed up the apartment. But she says he then stopped answering her calls and emails. She went to the house and says she heard voices inside the apartment, but no one would open the door.

“I called the police and the neighbors came out. Everybody was saying how he had been doing this to a lot of people,” says Sumintra.

Rego Park building gets upgrade and new name

From Forest Hills Post:

A 16-story building in Rego Park has been revamped and units in the fully-amenitized rental building are now available for lease.

The building, located at 62-60 99th Street, has been renamed ‘The Drake’ and 100 of the 419 apartments are now available with prices starting at $2,000 per month.

The building was purchased in 2016 by Madison Realty Capital for $135 million, the largest investment sales transaction in the history of Rego Park, according to local brokers. Madison bought the property from New Jersey-based Treetop Development, which had invested millions of dollars upgrading the 1960s-era building.

“Named after a historic cinema, which was a lively social and cultural center in the 1950s, The Drake honors Rego Park’s rich history, while delivering upgraded high-end apartments to an area dominated by Tudor-style homes,” said Eric Benaim, CEO and founder of Modern Spaces.

Goodbye, yellow brick road...er, Yellowstone Key Food

From Forest Hills Post:

A large real estate development company filed demolition permits last week to bulldoze Key Food, located on the corner of Queens Boulevard and Yellowstone Blvd.

The owner listed as David Schwartz of Slate Property Group plans to demolish the one-story building, which has multiple addresses such as 105-02 Queens Boulevard, 105-25 Gerard Place and 69-65 Yellowstone Boulevard.

Schwartz filed his demolition permit on June 23. The filing did not list what might replace the building.

Schwartz had no immediate comment.

However, hours later, the Real Deal reported that Schwartz had notified the publication that he planned to build an 11-story, 170-unit rental building.

Trump home to be a rental

From Curbed:

The modest Jamaica Estates home where President Donald Trump lived for his early childhood is about to become available once again—this time as a rental unit. According to Mansion Global, the 2,000-square-foot home will be listed with Jason Friedman, a broker who primarily works on Long Island, for “somewhere between $3,500 and $4,000 a month.”

The two-story brick and stucco house dates back to the mid-century, and the Trump family lived there when Donald was still a baby. They moved by the time he was four years old, but that was long enough to give it some cachet.

Cuomo once lived like a king in a Queens mansion

From Curbed:

For the price of a Manhattan one-bedroom apartment, you could rent an entire Queens mansion that was once owned by Governor Andrew Cuomo—for a little while, anyway. The governor’s former home in Douglaston, Queens sold last year for $2.4 million, but it’s back on the market as a short-term rental, available from July to December. The price: $5,500.

Cuomo lived in the home with his former wife, Kerry Kennedy, for a few years in the 1990s before selling it in 1993 to join Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign. It has the distinction of being the last place that Cuomo lived in Queens, his home borough—though it’s a far less humble place than the Holliswood home that his father, Mario, called home for many years.

The Cuomo house is part of the tony Douglas Manor enclave, a close-knit community where families tend to hunker down and stay a while. It has six bedrooms, four bathrooms, plenty of outdoor space, and close proximity to the waterfront.

Its current owners are Elias Roman, once the CEO of the now-defunct music-sharing app Songza, and his wife Sarah Jane. Fun fact: It may also be the “sister home” to a now-demolished Long Island mansion that served as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s inspiration for The Great Gatsby.

People would rather rent in LIC

From LIC Post:

The Long Island City real estate market is dominated by rentals, with permanent homes hard to come by, according to a recent report released by a New York real estate research firm.

The report, put out by Property Shark, noted that permanent residences make up less than one fifth of the housing stock in Long Island City. Its research found that there are 990 single and two family homes in the area and 4,056 condos/co-ops.

There were 25,950 rental units at the time of this August 2 report, more than five times the amount of family-owned units.

Most unique about these rental properties, however, is how many low-income units are available.

The report incorporates housing complexes owned by the New York Housing Authority in Ravenswood and Queensbridge. Between these two complexes there are 5,123 subsidized housing units, making up about a fifth of all rental units available in Long Island City.

In addition, there is the affordable housing project at Hunters Point South.

Ridgewood Theatre rentals will cost a pretty penny

From QNS.com:

New apartments at blockbuster prices will soon be the feature presentation at the former Ridgewood Theatre.

The former moviehouse located at 55-27 Myrtle Ave. is being converted from a 2,500-seat, five-screen multiplex theater to a five-story mixed use building featuring a commercial space on the lower floor and 50 residential units on the upper floors.

What really has residents in a tizzy is the prices for the apartments. A banner on the theater’s landmarked marquee is advertising the one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments starting at $2,300. That means the smallest apartments for rent will go for $2,300, with the larger units most likely fetching increasingly more money.

This can't be. REBNY and the pols they have bought off tell us that landmarking decreases property values. The numbers in this article must be typos then.

Still scammin', now more than ever

From the Queens Chronicle:

There is an apparent rash of scams targeted at unsuspecting apartment hunters in parts of Western Queens.

According to the office of state Sen. Jose Peralta (D-East Elmhurst), several constituents have filed complaints that victims have given money in advance to agencies that promise to find an apartment to rent, describing themselves as “multi-service agencies,” and acting like a broker.

Many of those targeted are native Spanish speakers.

But, in some cases, said Peralta, the apartment promised as an option to a prospective tenant is not even on the market — with some landlords not even aware that an apartment would be shown as a rental possibility — and would-be tenants are left with their fees lost.

In one case, a constituent said that he gave an agency $3,000, according to Peralta’s office.

When the victim and his family moved into the unit, they discovered a gas leak and bed bugs.

One woman, who remained anonymous, said she was cheated out of $6,000 by someone she thought to be a real estate agent when trying to secure an apartment in Woodside at the beginning of June.

Rents in Queens trending down?

From the NY Post:

While there’s a lot of new construction in hot ’hoods like Astoria and Long Island City, the borough’s median rental price is a mere $2,528, which is down 2.7 percent from last month’s median price of $2,597 and down 10.7 percent from the $2,830 high of June 2014.

The average rental price in Queens is $2,749, which is the same as last month, but 5.1 percent less than a year ago’s high of $2,896, according to a new market report from Douglas Elliman.

City wants to further upzone LIC

From Crains:

Despite a flurry of new construction in Long Island City that will most likely shift housing in the Queens neighborhood from rental to luxury condominiums, the de Blasio administration is pushing for greater density and more affordable units there, a planning official said at a Tuesday panel discussion

“Everybody understands the opportunity to put density where you have transit," said John Young, director of the Queens office of the Department of City Planning, referring to the number of subway lines that run through the rapidly changing industrial area across the East River from Manhattan. "It is what we call a smart growth strategy."

The administration is studying the possibility of allowing taller buildings in a portion of Long Island City, according to Mr. Young, who was speaking at an annual event sponsored by the local nonprofit Long Island City Partnership. Developers also weighed in on on a change taking place in the neighborhood regarding the new housing that will be built. Since the recession, most residential projects near the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge and mass transit lines have been rental units.

"With current land prices and construction costs ... doing rental at this point doesn’t make sense,” said Frank Monterisi Jr., an executive at the Related Cos., which built a large affordable-housing complex at Hunters Point South, a section of Long Island City along the waterfront. "Going forward, the [plans] that work will be [those] where you are selling condos at a pretty high value," he added.

City pays $3600 to house 3 people in one room

New York News
From Fox 5:

A Queens family of three fell on hard times and went from middle class to underclass overnight. They're looking for a helping hand, not a handout, but they say the city's homeless shelter system keeps giving them the runaround.

A room with old blankets tacked up to cover the windows is home to a teenage girl and her parents, Carla and Tim Winterhalter. They say the city pays $3,587.65 per month to house them at the Corona Family Shelter. That is more than double what it would cost them to get their own apartment in a nice neighborhood.

Winterhalter has been a union iron worker for 20 years, but when his wife's employer went out of business last September they couldn't afford their rent and landed in the shelter system. They are depending on public assistance for the first time in their lives.

Carla Winterhalter said she is trying to be strong for her daughter, but it is not easy.

The family of three sleeps and lives in the one room, which has a small kitchen area and a bathroom. Winterhalter says the Department of Homeless Services offered them apartments in tough neighborhoods, which he declined out of fear for his daughter's safety. When he finds a place, he says the red tape of the rental assistance program takes too long.

At these prices, can anyone afford Queens anymore?

From Brick Underground:

Wondering how much you need to make to live — and rent — in your favorite borough? We're here to help. The data below is based on the March 2015 rental market reports for Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, which were recently released.

Assuming that landlords require you to have 40 times the monthly rent (or you get a guarantor who makes 80 times or hire one), here's what your salary (or yours and any roommates/partners combined) will have to be, according to the new numbers.

QUEENS:
To live in a studio, you'll have to make $98,720. (Median: $2,468)
​To live in a one-bedroom, you'll have to make $118,280. (Median: $2,957)
To live in a two-bedroom, you'll have to make $151,600. (Median: $3,790)
To live in a three-plus-bedroom, you'll have to make $220,000. (Median: $5,5,00)

ArBnB does make life harder for everyone

From Wall Street Journal:

Airbnb, an online listing service for short-term accommodations, has long been criticized for driving up apartment rents from Venice Beach to Hell’s Kitchen.

Critics say that people who lease apartments and rent them out to tourists through Airbnb are willing to pay more rent, driving up prices for everyone. Also, critics say, landlords are simply putting units on Airbnb themselves, instead of renting them, decreasing the supply of long term rentals.

Now new research, commissioned by the company from an academic at the University of British Columbia, shows that Airbnb pushes up rents slightly in some major cities across the country.

In New York City, for example, Thomas Davidoff, an assistant professor at the Sauder School of Business, found that Airbnb increases the price of a one-bedroom unit by about $6 a month. In San Francisco, he found that it increases rents by on average about $19 a month.

Mr. Davidoff relied on data provided by the company that said that 80% to 90% of its 1 million listings are residents sharing the home in which they live. He didn’t count those as units lost from the overall housing stock because locals can still live there long-term.

Even without relying on Airbnb’s estimates, Mr. Davidoff said that if one assumes that all listings are investors renting out units solely on Airbnb, the increases are modest. In New York, rents would likely go up around $24 a month and San Francisco around $76 a month.

Airbnb listings aren’t evenly spread across most cities but tend to be concentrated in prime neighborhoods, meaning that popular places could face more pressure on rents than others.

How much will Fresh Direct pay back?

From the Queens Courier:

As online grocer FreshDirect is getting ready to pack up and exit Long Island City, the company is listing its massive Queens waterfront facility for sale.

FreshDirect has hired Cushman & Wakefield to sell its facility at 23-30 Borden Ave. ahead of its move to the South Bronx, which was approved last year.

Based on this article, it seems that Fresh Direct is trying to sell before they even have the rest of their subsidies in hand and opposition growing.

They agreed to stay till 2025, and the NYCIDA is supposed to have been monitoring them every year.

Funny how in 1999 in their application to IDA, they claimed more full time jobs than what's currently listed in their NYS ESD application for the $10 million.

So, will FD have to pay back the subsidies they got to fix up that space?

Fresh Direct Inc. f/k/a Gourmet Holdings, LLC
ID: 92407
Awarding Agency: IDA
Address: 23-30 Borden Avenue
Borough: Queens
Block: 68
Lot: 38
Subsidy Program: Industrial Incentive
Start Date: 12/08/1999
End Date: 06/30/2025
Jobs at the start of the deal: -
Jobs projected: 160
Current jobs FTE: 2650
Part-time permanent jobs: 76
Part-time temp. jobs: 0
Full-time permanent jobs: 2612
Full-time temp. jobs: 0
Contract employees: 0
Construction jobs: 0
Health Benefit full-time?: Y
Health Benefit part-time?: N
Percent of employees living in NYC: 78
Total value of subsidy: $5,214,191
Amount used to date: $3,149,480
Recapture amount: $0
Penalty: 0.00
Data source fiscal year: 2013
Bond Issuance: $69473
Value of Energy Benefit FY 11: $0.00
REAP FY 11: $0.00
CEP FY 11: $0.00

Queens rents now higher than Brooklyn's

From DNA Info:

Queens' rental prices are catching up to Brooklyn's — and surpassing them.

The ascendance of Queens has been a common refrain for more than a year now. Last month's rents — particularly for the "hot" northwest part of the borough that includes Long Island City and Astoria — show that Queens is no longer necessarily cheaper than Kings County.

Queens' median rents jumped 30.7 percent from the same time last year to $2,905 a month for January, according to a report from Douglas Elliman released Thursday.

That was $4 above Brooklyn's median rent, which rose 2.5 percent to $2,901 a month.

AirBnB just isn't kosher

From Capital New York:

Months after facing accusations by state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman that its users were violating rental and zoning laws, home sharing site Airbnb continues to host thousands of potentially illegal apartment listings in New York City.

That’s according to a Capital analysis of newly published data that was “scraped” from the Airbnb website by a community activist. More than 58 percent of the Airbnb listings in the city are for “entire” apartments or houses, meaning no one else would be present during a stay, according to the data.

Under state law, it is illegal to lease most homes—with the exception of one- and two-family residences—for periods of less than 30 days when the owner or tenant is not present. But of the 15,977 full-apartment listings found on Airbnb, just one requires stays longer than a month.