💪2022 NYC Real Estate Winners and Losers

Here’s what you will find in today’s email:

• 2022 Wrap-up

• Winners: Aman Resorts, Crumbl Cookies, JPMorgan Chase, Housing Works Cannabis Company, Serhant.

• Losers: NYCHA, the Office, Federal Reserve, Blackstone, MetaSubscribe now

2022 has come to an end.

This year, we started to see the market panic.

We saw the cracks from the pandemic and all that glorious free stimulus money from two years ago finally drive up inflation.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict turned to war.

China held firm to zero-Covid until finally easing restrictions at the end of this year.

The crypto market has gone dark with fall out from the FTX bankruptcy and fraud.

We may or may not be in a recession.

For all the uncertainty, the economy has been surprisingly strong with low unemployment and steady GDP growth.

To wrap up the year in real estate, I decided to share some stories that highlight some of the winners and losers in 2022.

Without further ado, I present my short list of NYC Real Estate’s Winners and Losers:

💪2022 NYC Real Estate Winners and Losers

Winners

🏨 Aman Resorts

Aman had a big year, opening the Aman New York inside the iconic Crown Building. With both residences and a hotel, Aman had one of the largest condo sales in the city- this $74M penthouse.

Known as the Jala penthouse, here’s what’s inside this 6,792 foot home:

• 4 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms

• Salt-water pool

• 3,746 warp around terrace

• Private elevator

• Central Park views

The Aman is also now one of NYC’s finest hotels, with rooms going for as much as $15,000 per night!

This is NYC luxury at its finest.

🍪 Crumbl Cookies

One of the biggest winners in the franchise retail space, Crumbl Cookies started in 2018 and has already expanded to over 600 locations in 47 states!

They recently opened on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, with more locations on the way in 2023 in Manhattan and the outer boroughs.

I may be biased, because we built the first Crumbl in NYC, however, this is a brand to watch over the coming years.

🏦 JPMorgan Chase

You won’t see me giving many awards to JPMorgan Chase, BUT their new headquarters (still under construction) is an amazing building.

The building is 1,388 feet and will be fully electric with net-zero emissions.

Here are some of its sustainable design features:

• 100% powered by renewable energy sourced from a New York State hydroelectric plant

• Recycled, reused, or upcycled 97% of the building materials from the demolition

• Air quality will exceed the highest standards in sustainability

• Water storage and reuse systems will decrease water usage by over 40 percent

This building, to be completed in 2025, is a winner for leading the way for NYC sustainable design.

🛒 Housing Works Cannabis Company

This nonprofit started as a resource for people diagnosed with HIV and AIDS, and somehow earned a license to become the first LEGAL cannabis retailer in NYC!

Their new 4,400 SF location in the East Village will most likely be packed over the coming weeks as NYC takes its sweet time in rolling out licenses to retailers to keep up with demand.

This first cannabis retailer will be one for the history books.

💰 Serhant.

Love him or hate him, Ryan Serhant and his team are everywhere.

Serhant is singlehandedly disrupting real estate brokerage by dominating traditional and social media.

From his TV shows, to his podcasts, youtube videos, social media channels, Serhant is making waves in the space and selling over $4B of real estate in the process.

Losers

🐀 NYCHA

New York City Housing Authority, NYCHA, the governing body that provides and oversees public housing in the city, was named the worst landlord in NYC. In other words, NYC was named its own worst landlord. With over 600,000 outstanding repair requests, and requesting $40B in funding for renovations and repairs, this truly is a disaster.

🏢 The Office (the asset class, not the TV show)

The pandemic gave many the ability to work from home, and while we may not all end up as remote workers, the office has changed for good. Many jobs are now “hybrid”, with workers coming in shifts, and more flexibility to work from home.

While I do believe many will be going back to the office for good, there has been a disruption that will require overhaul to the traditional office.

👿 Federal Reserve

The federal reserve has a couple main objectives - price stability and maximum employment. Price stability is achieved by keeping moderate inflation, and the fed set this target at 2%. This year, they failed at keeping this in check.

Inflation reared its ugly head in 2022, after the Fed assured us that it wouldn’t. Then, back peddling after seeing record inflation, they hiked rates 7 times!

The Fed has proven to be reactionary this year and and has failed its objective to keep down inflation.

🤬 Blackstone

Blackstone took some heat this year after limiting withdrawals on its $69B private REIT. These restrictions are in place for a reason, and investors know this, but it signaled that their investors wanted out and that’s a problem.

This isn’t an underlying flaw of the Blackstone portfolio, but it signals that investors may be looking to move money out of real estate and into cash or other opportunities.

🤦🏾 Meta

Meta made big moves in the past few years, starting with their rebrand from Facebook to Meta and going all in on the metaverse. During the pandemic, they doubled down on hiring and committed to growth.

This year, as we discussed in an earlier issue, Meta was forced to admit fault and lay off 11,000 employees, around 13% of their workforce!

This is bad news for NYC real estate as they had to pull out of more than 250,000 SF of their new Hudson Yards office space.

That’s all for this year. Thank you for reading and following along in 2022!

I’ve got some new and exciting things in store for 2023, so stay tuned.

If you haven’t done so already, please subscribe!