Bjarke Ingels’ West 57th Street project in New York (developed by The Durst Organization) has just started renting apartments (March 1).
Since I’m in the rental business, I thought it would be worthwhile to take a look at the rents – though I tend to obsess over all buildings and not just rental ones.
Firstly, the project has a total of 709 apartments and 178 different unit types because of the architectural variations in the building. Of these units, 142 of them (20%) have been designated as affordable and were offered up via a lottery to people who fall within certain incomes ranges.
Here are the affordable rents via 6sqft.com:

I don’t know the exact numbers, but Curbed New York speculated – based on what was seen at other buildings on the west side – that the total number of applicants for these 142 units may have reached over 100,000!
For the market-rate units, the average monthly rents are as follows (via Curbed NY):
Studio: $2,770
One-bedroom: $3,880
Two-bedroom: $6,500
Three-bedroom: $11,000
Four-bedroom: $16,500
I wasn’t able to find average unit sizes (to calculate per square foot rents), but I estimate the overall average unit size to be around 1,000 square feet.
940,000 sf (total gross floor area) - 45,000 sf of retail x 0.80 efficiency (lower than average because of the shape of the building) / 709 units = approximately 1,000 sf of rentable area per unit. That’s just my rough guess based on what I could find online.
Based on the Curbed comment section though, there are certainly some smaller units:

If anyone has any additional figures, please share them in the comments below. I think there are a few subscribers to this blog who are involved in the project.
Image from via57west.com
Earlier this week it was announced that Sam Zell – the billionaire who initially made his money in real estate – is selling over 23,000 apartment units to Starwood Capital Group (Barry Sternlicht) for $5.4 billion. The units are all controlled by Zell’s company, Equity Residential.
This is interesting for a number of reasons, but I’d like to point out two of them today.
Firstly, Zell is famous for selling another one of this companies, Equity Office Properties Trust, to Blackstone for $23 billion in 2007. This was right before the market fell out and so some people are asking whether this signals the end of the apartment run. Average apartment rents in the US have increased roughly 20% over the last five years.
But at the same time (and this is my second point), it might not be that at all. Instead, it could simply be a rebalancing of the portfolio. Here’s an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal:
…Equity Residential has become “less aggressive as buyers of assets” in recent years, Mr. Zell said in an interview late Friday. Instead, it is getting out of suburban markets and into downtown urban centers, where young people are moving and where it is more difficult to build, he said.
Most of the 23,300 apartment units in the deal, roughly a quarter of Equity Residential’s total, are low-rise and mid-rise units in suburban markets in and around southern Florida, Denver, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Southern California. Analysts expect a significant amount of new supply to be concentrated in those markets in coming years.
Of course, Sternlicht is buying these suburban properties and so he clearly has a different investment thesis. (The purchase price works out to be $230,600 per unit at a cap rate of roughly 5.5%.) But that’s what makes these deals so interesting to scrutinize. Nobody really knows what the future holds.
Bjarke Ingels’ West 57th Street project in New York (developed by The Durst Organization) has just started renting apartments (March 1).
Since I’m in the rental business, I thought it would be worthwhile to take a look at the rents – though I tend to obsess over all buildings and not just rental ones.
Firstly, the project has a total of 709 apartments and 178 different unit types because of the architectural variations in the building. Of these units, 142 of them (20%) have been designated as affordable and were offered up via a lottery to people who fall within certain incomes ranges.
Here are the affordable rents via 6sqft.com:

I don’t know the exact numbers, but Curbed New York speculated – based on what was seen at other buildings on the west side – that the total number of applicants for these 142 units may have reached over 100,000!
For the market-rate units, the average monthly rents are as follows (via Curbed NY):
Studio: $2,770
One-bedroom: $3,880
Two-bedroom: $6,500
Three-bedroom: $11,000
Four-bedroom: $16,500
I wasn’t able to find average unit sizes (to calculate per square foot rents), but I estimate the overall average unit size to be around 1,000 square feet.
940,000 sf (total gross floor area) - 45,000 sf of retail x 0.80 efficiency (lower than average because of the shape of the building) / 709 units = approximately 1,000 sf of rentable area per unit. That’s just my rough guess based on what I could find online.
Based on the Curbed comment section though, there are certainly some smaller units:

If anyone has any additional figures, please share them in the comments below. I think there are a few subscribers to this blog who are involved in the project.
Image from via57west.com
Earlier this week it was announced that Sam Zell – the billionaire who initially made his money in real estate – is selling over 23,000 apartment units to Starwood Capital Group (Barry Sternlicht) for $5.4 billion. The units are all controlled by Zell’s company, Equity Residential.
This is interesting for a number of reasons, but I’d like to point out two of them today.
Firstly, Zell is famous for selling another one of this companies, Equity Office Properties Trust, to Blackstone for $23 billion in 2007. This was right before the market fell out and so some people are asking whether this signals the end of the apartment run. Average apartment rents in the US have increased roughly 20% over the last five years.
But at the same time (and this is my second point), it might not be that at all. Instead, it could simply be a rebalancing of the portfolio. Here’s an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal:
…Equity Residential has become “less aggressive as buyers of assets” in recent years, Mr. Zell said in an interview late Friday. Instead, it is getting out of suburban markets and into downtown urban centers, where young people are moving and where it is more difficult to build, he said.
Most of the 23,300 apartment units in the deal, roughly a quarter of Equity Residential’s total, are low-rise and mid-rise units in suburban markets in and around southern Florida, Denver, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Southern California. Analysts expect a significant amount of new supply to be concentrated in those markets in coming years.
Of course, Sternlicht is buying these suburban properties and so he clearly has a different investment thesis. (The purchase price works out to be $230,600 per unit at a cap rate of roughly 5.5%.) But that’s what makes these deals so interesting to scrutinize. Nobody really knows what the future holds.
Yesterday CAPREIT announced that we have entered into our first joint venture development agreement for a mixed-use project at 1100 King Street West in Toronto’s Liberty Village neighborhood.
The agreement is to acquire a 1/3 undivided interest in the residential component of the project for $60.3M. The residential component will consist of 3 towers and 506 apartment suites (sitting on top of a roughly 160,000 square foot commercial/retail podium that will not be owned by CAPREIT).
Here’s what Thomas Schwartz, President and CEO of CAPREIT had to say:
“We expect our interest in the property, combined with the property management fees we will receive, will be accretive to our cash flow and set the stage for similar partnerships, along with our own new rental developments in the future.”
As a member of the development team at CAPREIT, it feels great to get this one out there.
Click here for the full public press release.
Yesterday CAPREIT announced that we have entered into our first joint venture development agreement for a mixed-use project at 1100 King Street West in Toronto’s Liberty Village neighborhood.
The agreement is to acquire a 1/3 undivided interest in the residential component of the project for $60.3M. The residential component will consist of 3 towers and 506 apartment suites (sitting on top of a roughly 160,000 square foot commercial/retail podium that will not be owned by CAPREIT).
Here’s what Thomas Schwartz, President and CEO of CAPREIT had to say:
“We expect our interest in the property, combined with the property management fees we will receive, will be accretive to our cash flow and set the stage for similar partnerships, along with our own new rental developments in the future.”
As a member of the development team at CAPREIT, it feels great to get this one out there.
Click here for the full public press release.
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