Developers are building Queens condos like it’s 2008

For the second time this year, monthly condominium plan filings in Queens have reached levels not seen since 2008. After reaching a nine-year high in January with nine new condo plans submitted to the New York Attorney General’s office, filings reached yet another new high last month with 12 new plans.

An analysis of data from the AG’s real estate finance bureau found that 37 new condo plans have been submitted for Queens from January through May 2018, already surpassing the year-long totals for both 2016 and 2017, which each saw 35 submissions.

May’s batch of condo plans centered around Long Island City, with seven out of 12 plans located in LIC proper, plus two in Hunters Point and one in Astoria. Other neighborhoods have contributed to the early-2018 Queens condo boom as well – from January through May, Flushing saw eight new condo plans filed, Corona had three, and six other filings were scattered across other parts of the borough, from Woodside to the Rockaways.

The largest single Queens condo filing last month was the Alexandra Condominium in Astoria, a Danzig Realty property at 23-43 31st Road with 25 residential units.

Also of note was a cluster of eight new condos in Long Island City, all of which are being developed by Salm Properties. Six of these condos, each four stories tall and containing six units each, occupy a consecutive stretch along 45th Road, from 21-20 to 21-30.

Brooklyn condos have also experienced an atypically strong start to 2018, though by a different measure. For the third time this year, the total number of residential units proposed in new Brooklyn condo filings in one month has exceeded 500 – something that hadn’t happened since 2008.

Brooklyn has long been the leading borough for sheer quantity of condo filings, but with a much smaller average condo size than in Manhattan or Queens. Over the past decade, the average condo complex in Brooklyn has consisted of 12 residential units, compared to an average of 27 units per complex in Queens and 40 in Manhattan.

But over past few months, a handful of large condo projects in Brooklyn have bucked that trend, driving the remarkable spike in proposed condo units. Five new Brooklyn projects were submitted in the past five months with more than 100 residential units each – which is already more than the borough has had in any full year since 2007.

The major new condo Brooklyn condo project in May was CIM Group’s mixed rental and condo project at 85 Jay Street in Dumbo, with 408 residential units proposed. This was the second largest condo plan submitted this year, after the 490-unit condo at 11 Hoyt Street in Downtown Brooklyn, submitted in March.

Across the city, May saw a total of 40 new condo plan submissions in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, with a proposed total of 1,240 residential units.