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Could apartments in New York City get any smaller? I guess so… Mayor Bloomberg recently announced a competition for architects to submit designs for mini-apartments measuring just 275 to 300 square feet (25.5 to 28 square meters or half the size of subway cars in Manhattan) to address the surge of demand for studio and one-bedroom rentals. As part of Bloomberg’s “New Housing Marketplace Plan,” a program to finance 165,000 new and renovated units of below-market affordable housing by the …

A new wave of buyers from China is snapping up luxury properties across the U.S., injecting billions of dollars into the country’s residential-real-estate market. Buyers from China and Hong Kong accounted for $9 billion of U.S. home sales in the 12 months ending in March – up 89% from 2010, making them the second-largest group of foreign buyers of U.S. homes behind Canadians, according to data from the National Association of Realtors.
As a result, the industry is scrambling to …

For the first time in decades, many U.S. cities are outpacing their suburbs in growth. According to recent Census data, 27 of the nation’s 51 largest metropolitan areas are outpacing their suburbs in growth between July 2010 and July 2011. By contrast, from 2000 to 2010 only five metro areas saw their cores grow faster than the surrounding suburbs. This underscores not only changing attitudes about urban living but also the impact of the housing bust and the recession.
Since …

Brooklyn’s real estate – particularly in Bushwick – lights up
Bushwick, Williamsburg’s neighbor to the East, has become an increasingly desirable area, as artists looking for cheap, large space found solace in the embrace of the neighborhood’s commercial loft spaces. Another factor contributing to Bushwick’s appeal is the influx of art galleries and pop-ups that have recently moved into the rows of warehouse spaces. Both occurrences are the seeds for residential real estate investment, but the shift is not bound …

“The Lord of the Numbers” in New York City Real Estate is Mr. Jonathan Miller. His appraisal firm, Miller Samuel, is without a doubt the most noticed and respected in town. Recently, Mr. Miller declared that now is the best time to buy a residential piece of property in the Big Apple since 2006.
Why does he think so? The difference between the cost (in terms of cash flow) of buying and renting is the narrowest in the last six …

Across the pond, affluent citizens from France, Britain and other European nations who are increasingly concerned about their assets due to the deepening euro zone’s sovereign debt crisis are flying to buy one of the world’s most stable investments: Manhattan real estate. As a result of the demand from overseas, New York’s condo values are expected to increase, enabling the foreign investor to use cash to generate returns with a resale and avoid high taxes at home. To …