A growing number of ex-New York City dwellers are scooping up commercial real estate in Hudson Valley towns.
At the onset of the pandemic last year, wealthy New Yorkers left the city for their second homes or found new houses to escape the health crisis. As those ex-New Yorkers appreciated their new environment, some of them put down roots by buying stores — or even hotels — to open businesses, the Wall Street Journal reported.
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Andrea Westerlind, who started an outdoor gear and apparel company in New York City, moved its operation over the summer to Millerton in Dutchess County, where she bought a two-story retail building.
“There’s amazing energy up here, and there are so many young people,” said Westerlind, who now lives in nearby western Massachusetts. “In six months I will have done more retail sales than I would normally do in a whole year in two locations in the city.”
Michael Glickman, a long-time New Yorker and a founder of a liquor company, bought a weekend home in Hudson in Columbia County four years ago. He now owns two boutique hotels in Hudson and is in contract to buy a third hotel.
In Columbia, Greene and northern Dutchess counties, about 30 commercial real estate sales were pending as of late January, Raj Kumar of Select Sotheby’s International Realty told the Journal. The number is more than four times the number of commercial sales that closed in the first quarter of 2020.
“We have people with much higher incomes that are moving up here,” Kumar said. “That’s why commercial real estate is so attractive now, because stores will actually make money — retailers will make money.” [WSJ] — Akiko Matsuda