Are there really that many empty apartments? I am sure they exist, but are there really enough of them to make a dent in the market? Having lived in the city for years, I've never actually seen one.
I also wonder if you have enough cash to buy and hold NYC apartments, wouldn't your money do better in some sort of a REIT?
If you look at the new residential sky scrapers like 432 Park around 10pm on a weeknight when most people should be home, you'll notice it's mostly dark.
These tall expensive condo towers are like totems to the wealthy absentee residents of New York.
People are saying they can't get an apartment in NYC. Which is met by disbelief by people who actually live in NYC.
I believe this might be due to the fact that people are really saying that they want a, say, lower Manhattan apartment but can't afford the good ones anywhere. These are probably upper middle class people trying to live a bit outside their means. It's not really that they can't afford NYC, they just don't want to live in Harlem. Or even in Brooklyn, which actually has pretty nice apartments. When I look around Harlem or the Bronx, I don't think, "empty".
Not being able to live where the rich people live is not a problem that society should spend much time solving. I'm one of the very comfortable upper middle class. Yet I don't have a Ferrari, nor do I own a condo on Miami Beach. (Or Manhattan for that matter.) That doesn't mean that society has some sort of housing and car imbalance that it needs to address.
There may indeed be an imbalance nationally, but NYC is definitely not any kind of example of one.
Guess you're not from NYC based on your post. So Brooklyn is the highest price real estate these days, with many apartments, brownstones and lofts renting for many 000s per month. Harlem has gone through a renaissance, with townhouses on formerly blighted blocks undergoing renovation and selling for $2-5MM. These are places that were used as crack houses in the late 80s and 90s. Word has it, new arrivals to the city are moving way up in the Bronx, but the commute is next to impossible. Suburbs are also ridiculously expensive places to rent or own. The problem, as this article states, is not yuppies wanting to live beyond their means, but an entire city full of wealthy. Yes, if you're a successful professional, you can afford something, but that pool of affordable housing is shrinking daily. I worked and lived in NYC for 30 years and I don't recognize it today.
NYC is definitely an example of a housing imbalance. It has nothing to do with UMC types not wanting to live in Harlem. It has to do with the fact that prices are ridiculous throughout the city. The quality of building you get for what you pay is way out of whack. The housing stock is old and generally low quality.
Does the data presented in that article really suggest that the apartments are actually empty or is it simply that it takes a while to sell out a new development? It's going to take a while to move a hundred units, especially if you want to increase the profits.
The StreetEasy report the article is inspired by actually shows that in 2019 there were more condos sold than completed.
The only people with that problem are running sovereign wealth funds.
IMO that should be invested in the infrastructure and social services of your nation to create a more educated and productive populace which will return the investment in the form of taxes.
There is a section that addresses that specific point:
> The Landmarks Preservation Board protects the facades of historic buildings, but not their interiors. Thus landmarking led townhouses once divided into multiple apartments to be converted into single-family mansions for the incoming super-rich—serving only to further inflame the speculative energies that skyrocketed the prices of the buildings they preserved.
Speaking of distinguishing subtle differences in blues, there is actually a linguistic component.
English and Russian color terms divide the color spectrum differently. Unlike English, Russian makes an obligatory distinction between lighter blues (“goluboy”) and darker blues (“siniy”). We investigated whether this linguistic difference leads to differences in color discrimination. We tested English and Russian speakers in a speeded color discrimination task using blue stimuli that spanned the siniy/goluboy border. We found that Russian speakers were faster to discriminate two colors when they fell into different linguistic categories in Russian (one siniy and the other goluboy) than when they were from the same linguistic category (both siniy or both goluboy). Moreover, this category advantage was eliminated by a verbal, but not a spatial, dual task. These effects were stronger for difficult discriminations (i.e., when the colors were perceptually close) than for easy discriminations (i.e., when the colors were further apart). English speakers tested on the identical stimuli did not show a category advantage in any of the conditions. These results demonstrate that (i) categories in language affect performance on simple perceptual color tasks and (ii) the effect of language is online (and can be disrupted by verbal interference).
I on the other hand, find most R packages provide barely readable documentation. I can just hope that the vignette exists and actually explains the inputs/outputs.
By that theory, you should diversify away from those that are not going to be "superstocks" (in the post, Dell grew 550x and pushed up the entire index). For example, HP or Exxon or UPS will probably do okay, but will not outperform the rest of S&P by a huge margin. Therefore, they will only weigh down your big earners.
> you can research growth stocks (e.g. pharmaceutical companies undergoing FDA trials) and pick the promising ones
Those FDA trials are expensive. Those companies have many experts in the field that believe those trials have a reasonable chance of success. Otherwise, they would not proceed with them. Even the FDA itself believes those trials have a good chance of success. There are plenty of Wall Street analysts who are also evaluating these trials. Regular Joe is not going to outsmart all those people.
Fair. But I meant that as an example - by research I was thinking of looking in depth at the drug and where it is in the pipeline, what it treats / the market the drug might enter, how promising its research looks, how similar drugs/analogues faired in FDA trials, etc. I wouldn't suggest someone with a poor background in chemistry or pharmaceuticals to try doing that - I think if you're looking at riskier companies, you should mostly only invest in what you know.
People often forget about those.