The Insider: NYC Crime Not an Issue, Supply and Demand OTOH…

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LISTING COURTESY OF LESLIE J. GARFIELD

I moved to New York City in 1988 and remember being reasonably freaked out the first time I had a “pan handler” pull a gun on me and relieve me of all of my cash. By the end of my 4 years at Columbia I had lost count of the number of times someone I knew was mugged at gun or knifepoint. It seems the city is engulfed in a new wave of crime and New York City is back to those days.

But is it really? Bloomberg reports that contrary to the constant crime chatter and anecdotal evidence, New York is not only the safest of any of the six largest American cities…

It is also the second safest of all US metropolitan areas…

And on top of all that it is safer than either the suburbs or the countryside!

Let’s stop talking about how bad crime is in the City, shall we? Okay, it’s true you are more likely to actually see a crime or read about it in the NY Post. But the crime is not likely to happen to you. So relax.

Check out this graph from Bloomberg which shows the dramatic outflow from NYC of households during the pandemic, but also the reversal of that trend. Both were far more dramatic than what other cities saw.

Our analysis is that this is what is causing BOTH the tight rental and tight sales market (both shown in the charts below).

Think about it this way. If you owned an apartment and moved out during the pandemic period but still own your apartment, you are unlikely to sell until you find out if your boss is going to require you to be back in the office full time. And if you don’t own but are moving to New York for employment, and are unsure about future work-from-home policies, you are likely to rent to preserve your flexibility should the situation change. In other words, the rental market is super hot and driven by demand. The sales market remains hot because it is supply constrained.

Have a great weekend!

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