An Upper East Side Exodus?

The 2010 Census showed 13% of the 36,700 units on the Upper East Side sat vacant, and vacancies in the area, which is considered Manhattan’s most expensive zip code, have dropped 26% over the past decade. What’s going on? Is the economy driving former residents to less expensive neighborhoods? Or were they just lying in their hammocks in the Hamptons when the census people came knocking?

One real estate appraiser suggests that the high vacancy rate actually suggests greater affluence. The census is designed to count people living in their primary residences, and to count nobody twice. So whether the owners were physically there or not, if their Upper East Side apartment is just their city crash pad, the property is classified as vacant.

There’s another piece that factors into the UES conundrum though. The total number of housing units has dropped by 3.9%. It’s much easier to account for high vacancy rates in, say, Battery Park City, where the number of housing units has increased by 106% over the past 10 years.

Turtle Bay–East Midtown had a similar vacancy rate at 13%, but only 17% of occupants responded to the census. Whether this is because residents in this area that includes Trump Tower and Park Avenue Place are part-time or whether they just couldn’t be bothered to fill out the form remains to be seen, and the city is contesting the results.

In typical New York fashion, though, there is always someone to blame. This week’s snipe-ees? The Lehman Brothers.  “New York was growing, but after Lehman [Brothers collapsed] it just stopped,” said Andrew Beveridge, a sociology professor at Queens college and demographic expert. Crafty work for men who have been dead a hundred years.

Source: DNAinfo

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