13 Manhattan Office Conversions, 5,395 Apartments, Six Days

Thirteen Manhattan buildings carrying office or hotel to residential conversion applications moved through the New York City Department of Buildings between September 8 and September 13, and the apartments proposed on those filings add up to 5,395. The count comes from the city’s own DOB NOW job application data, read building by building rather than filing by filing, because a single conversion can generate a dozen plumbing, structural and mechanical sub-filings that each repeat the building’s unit total.

Why it matters

Conversions get reported one tower at a time, which is why the scale is easy to miss. Counted together, this set is proposing more apartments in six days of paperwork than most full years of ground-up multifamily approvals deliver in Manhattan, and it is doing it without a rezoning, an acquisition or a groundbreaking. For a developer weighing a new site against an existing building, the useful signal is that the competition for the next renter is already inside the file. For a general contractor, it is a bid pipeline measured in millions of square feet of interior work.

The numbers

111 Wall Street is the largest at 1,569 apartments across a 24-story building going to 30 stories. Then 212 Broadway at 788, SL Green Realty at 740 Third Avenue with 609, 30 Broad Street at 487, 36 Exchange Place at 382, and Yellowstone Real Estate twice: 312 apartments in place of 606 existing units at a commercial hotel at 440 West 57th Street, and 192 at 220 West 42nd Street. Rudin Management’s 133 East 40th Street would turn a 22-story office building into 297 apartments and add three floors, at a stated cost of $36.8 million. Namdar Realty has 188 at 830 Third Avenue, Prospect Developers 177 at 229 West 36th Street, William Macklowe Company 150 at 291 Broadway, 133 at 300 East 42nd Street, and 111 at 20 East 76th Street.

One detail only the file shows: the owner of record on the parent 30 Broad Street conversion job is an entity called 111 Wall GC LLC, the same name carried on filings at 111 Wall Street, while Rose Associates appears on the mechanical sub-filing for the same job. The largest conversion in the set and the fourth largest share a contracting entity of record.

What’s next

None of this is occupancy. These are applications and permits, and several sit in objections, meaning a plan examiner has open comments. The number to watch is how many convert to a certificate of occupancy, against a New York metro asking rent that our own tracking puts at $3,627 a month, up 4.5% over the year. That rent is what the whole set is underwriting against. For context on how this pipeline is being financed, see our coverage of the $208 million loan behind a Downtown Brooklyn office conversion and the broader New York market.