Features

As temperatures begin to drop, New York City’s construction market shows no signs of cooling down. New York YIMBY’s construction report for the third quarter of 2024, based on permit filings submitted to the Department of Buildings during the three-month period from July through September, shows strong filing activity that indicates momentum is continuing from the preceding quarterly tallies. In the third quarter, New York’s developers filed permits for a total of 1,071 new buildings, measuring a combined 26.8 million square feet with 18,935 residential and hotel units. Below, we break the data down in a series of detailed analyses. A complete data sheet, with detailed information on each proposed development, is available with a subscription to YIMBY’s Building Wire.

As New York City simmers in some of the year’s hottest weeks, the city’s construction and real estate markets remain equally hot. The second quarter of the year, which spans the period from April through June, registered a total of 1,077 new building permits filed with the city’s Department of Buildings. As such, Q2 2024 counts the second-highest number of new permit filings since YIMBY began its tally at the start of the decade and continues the strong trend established in the two preceding quarters, which now count the first- and third-highest permit filing totals. The 14,795 filed-for residential and hotel units also make for one of the highest quarterly counts of the decade, as do the 21.5 million filed-for square feet of new building floor area. YIMBY has meticulously vetted each of the thousand-plus new building permits submitted to the city in the second quarter and compiled a series of charts and analyses that look at emergent overarching trends.

New York YIMBY has tallied the records for new building permit filings for the first quarter of 2024, and the results are one for the record books. According to data compiled from permit filings submitted to the Department of Buildings, during the three-month period from January through March, builders throughout the city filed a combined total of 19,819 residential and hotel units, the highest total for any three-month period since YIMBY started tracking the statistic in 2020. Similarly, the combined filed-for square footage of 26 million is also the highest quarterly tally for the decade so far.

New construction permit numbers are in for the fourth quarter of 2023, and the figures are encouraging. From October through December, New York’s developers filed permits for 1,521 new buildings, the highest quarterly tally for the 2020s decade so far. The figure represents a 54-percent increase from the third-quarter permit count of 986. The total filed for floor area also increased significantly, rising from 18.3 million square feet in Q3 to 23.1 million square feet in Q4 (a 26-percent increase), as did the number of filed for residential and hotel units, which grew from 14,010 in Q3 to 16,396 in Q4 (a 17-percent increase). The charts and analyses below offer a detailed breakdown of the fourth quarter’s permit filings. The full list of quarterly filings, with detailed information on every project, is available with a subscription to YIMBY’s Building Wire.

Construction is booming in New York, confirming that last quarter’s surge was no aberration. New York YIMBY’s third-quarter report, which covers June through August, indicates a continuation of the development momentum from the spring when total filed-for square footage rose by 73 percent.