The New York City real estate industry’s employment gains continue to be offset by big job losses in the construction industry, according to an employment report released today by Eastern Consolidated that placed the former among the city’s biggest gainers in 2011 and the latter among the city’s biggest job losers. Overall 500 new real estate jobs were added in November bringing the year’s total count to 2,900 new jobs, while the construction industry lost 700 jobs last month bringing the year-to-date loss to 3,200 jobs.

New York City as a whole added about 9,000 jobs in November, thanks largely to retailers loading up on staff for the holiday shopping season. – Adam Fusfeld [more]

While the New York City real estate sector gained 300 jobs in May, according to the Eastern Consolidated monthly unemployment report, the construction industry (which is in its own class in the Eastern report) is continuing to suffer, losing 2,000 jobs month-over-month. The precipitous drop comes on the heels of ongoing instability in the construction sector — the industry ha [more]

While the New York City real estate sector gained 300 jobs in May, according to the Eastern Consolidated monthly unemployment report, the construction industry (which is in its own class in the Eastern report) is continuing to suffer, losing 2,000 jobs month-over-month. The precipitous drop comes on the heels of ongoing instability in the construction sector — the industry ha [more]

Click chart for larger version (Chart source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)

Rents in New York City and Northern New Jersey saw their smallest annual increase since 1994, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, climbing just 1.6 percent between January 2010 and the same month a year earlier. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate was at 10 percent in the area over the same time period. Housing costs in the region have ramped up far more rapidly than other living expenses for the last quarter century, according to the report. Since the early 1980s, housing costs have increased by more than 300 percent, compared to food expenses which rose 125 percent and clothing, which rose less than 20 percent. Household energies on the other hand have decreased by 1.6 percent over the same time period. TRD [more]

From the South Florida Web site: A statewide survey of real estate professionals puts unemployment at the top of stumbling blocks to a robust market recovery in Florida. Since unemployed people don’t need office space, don’t shop, don’t pay rent and don’t buy houses, one respondent said, it’s unlikely to mean a serious recovery is in the offing. Reactions from 319 participants in 13 urban regions of the state representing reactions for 15 types of property were largely unified: more vacancies and decreasing rents will hit commercial and residential real estate for some time. The current unemployment rate of 11.8 percent must decline before people can start participating in the market again, said Tim Becker, director of the University of Florida’s Bergstrom Center for Real Estate Studies in Gainesville, which conducted the survey. [more]

The New York City real estate industry shed 600 broker-related jobs in October, bringing the 2009 tally thus far to 5,700, or 4.7 percent of that sector’s labor force, according to a new employment report from Eastern Consolidated. Nationwide, brokerage firms, leasing agencies and management companies cut 2,200 employees during the month, for a current total of 105,500 job losses, or 5.1 percent, since December 2008. The construction industry alone, however, is weathering a more serious fallout. A whopping 16,300 New York City construction jobs — 12.3 percent — were lost during the month, though that was only a fraction of the nearly 1.6 million construction employees terminated across the country, who comprised 20.7 percent of the industry. TRD

CB Richard Ellis has negotiated the $8 million sale of three vintage fire houses in Greenwich Village, Midtown and Cobble Hill. Meanwhile, a report has surfaced showing that just one third of residents in New York City affordable housing are employed and, in the race to win the contract for the Aqueduct race track project, a group of more than 25 minority and women-owned business organizations have thrown their support behind the SL Green/Hard Rock development team. Click here for more. TRD [more]

New hires with delayed start-dates are helping to temporarily support the rental market, but likely won’t be enough to prevent further price declines this winter, according to Daniel Baum, the CEO of TDG/The Real Estate Group New York, which released its October Manhattan rental market report today (see the full report after the jump). This spring, law firms and consulting companies began offering new hires incentives to push back their start dates. For example, in March, law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore asked first-year associates to postpone their start date with an option of beginning in October, November or January, according to the American Lawyer. These kinds of decisions had an impact on the rental market, Baum said, as those new hires postponed their apartment searches until the fall. That, combined with rising unemployment, led to a slower-than-normal summer rental season, Baum said. He said this group of renters is finally moving to the city and that their presence is helping to temporarily prop up the rental market. [more]

Rising unemployment is causing the foreclosure crisis, which started
with the relatively small subprime market, to expand to prime
borrowers. That’s a much larger pool of homeowners, a sign that
foreclosure rate — more than 6,600 home foreclosure filings per day,
according to the Center for Responsible Lending — isn’t likely to slow
down in the near future. “People are no longer defaulting simply
because of a change in the payment structure of their loan. They are
defaulting because of lost jobs or reduced hours or pay,” said a
Florida foreclosure task force report released in September. Michael
Barr, assistant secretary for financial institutions at the Treasury
Department, said last month that more than six million families could
lose their homes over the next three years. [more]

New Haven, Conn., now has the lowest apartment vacancy rate in the U.S., at 2.5 percent, replacing New York City, where the rate is 2.9 percent. Still, New York’s rate is down 6.8 percent from a year ago, bucking a national trend. Apartment vacancies in the U.S. hit 7.8 percent in the third quarter, the highest rate in 23 years, according to commercial real estate research firm Reis. The rise may be attributed to the climbing national unemployment rate, which the Department of Labor said last week had increased to 9.8 percent in August. With fewer jobs available, rental demand decreased. Asking rents declined 1.8 percent from a year earlier, and actual rent paid by tenants shrank 2.7 percent over the same period. “With New York being relatively more dependent on the still-embattled financial services sector, it may take a few more quarters before we see rents bottoming out” there, said Victor Calanog, director of research at Reis. “We are on track for 2009 to register as the worst year in rent drops on record, far exceeding the historic 3.8 percent decline recorded in 2002.” [more]