Housing Notes: 25 years later, Downtown Manhattan Real Estate

Never Forget.

Five years ago, I was at my Midtown Manhattan office on West 45th Street (between Fifth and Sixth Avenues) by about 8 am on September 11, 2001. After the first plane hit, colleagues from around the country began emailing to check whether I was alive. That’s a weird question to have to answer, but when connecting with them later, they basically didn’t know how to ask it.

I’ve written about my memories of that fateful day several times over the years, but the best version is at the bottom of my 2021 post. I prefer not to rehash what I’ve already written, but it still accurately conveys what I experienced that day. 

I remember wondering on that day in 2001, when the 5th anniversary of 9/11 came to be, whether it would be less painful to think about that day. As if 5 years out might feel less smothering. Here we are 25 years later, and nearly 30 percent of U.S. residents were born after the September 11, 2001 attacks (about 103 million people). My concern has shifted to making sure the pain of that memory doesn’t fade, as outlined in this previous piece in The Real Deal. But now we find ourselves in another war in the Middle East.

Lower Manhattan Was Rebuilt With Gusto

Before I get into the analysis, I thought I would share a fascinating look at the World Trade Center when it was first built in Curbed. The structure was so massive and out of scale with the neighborhood that government offices dominated early tenancy. The neighborhood effectively evolved around it.

There was an inspiring Wall Street Journal piece, 25 Years After the September 11 Attacks, Lower Manhattan Is Thriving (gift link), which is an important read to understand the sentiment on display in the city. I borrowed a form of the word “thriving” from the article title for this post title. It is important to remember that NYC’s response to 9/11 was to rebuild and then build a lot more. My biggest takeaway from the overall experience was how the city and the country came together. Bloomberg also had a great piece: In Post 9/11 Era, NYC’s Downtown Forges Life Beyond Wall Street (gift link), to which I contributed data for some charts:

I repurposed the same data I provided to Bloomberg above in the following two charts. This was reflected in the residential sales market, and growth over the past 25 years has been significantly higher in FiDi than Manhattan’s overall growth.

However, price growth in FiDi over the same period was more consistent with Manhattan. It was a little weaker but occasionally exceeded. That’s logical in a market that has seen a large volume of new product enter the housing stock. In the FiDi neighborhood, there are only a handful of co-ops, each with just a few sales, and co-op data around 9/11 was not public record, such as 55 Liberty, 26 Beaver, 3 Hanover Sq, 176 Broadway, 65 Nassau St, and a few others, so I relied on condos.

Final Thoughts

Twenty-five years later, New York’s answer to 9/11 was to rebuild, and Lower Manhattan’s residential market shows it, outperforming the rest of Manhattan even as FiDi’s price gains were tempered by heavy new construction. But the real lesson was that just as the city chose to build rather than give up, it is also important to remember, rather than letting that day fade away.

The Actual Final Thought – I ate there several times and clearly remember the purple carpet in the elevator lobby.