and, more to the point, is there a better way to do things, if an efficient economy, more jobs, less income concentration are things we value?
Interesting that, according to these articles, the lords of NYC land will collect 6% or 8% of the land's value when the rent resets. 6 or 8%! (Typical property taxes in NYC for condos run less than 1% of the total value; see http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/nyregion/many-high-end-new-york-apartments-have-modest-tax-rates.html, which includes this paragraph:
"In a study of 2010 nationwide property tax rates, the average homeowner paid a median of 1.14 percent of home value that year, according to the Tax Foundation, a research group. In Manhattan, that figure was 0.78 percent. For the $88 million apartment at 15 Central Park West, 0.78 percent would be $686,000. But this year, the property taxes due on that penthouse were $59,000."
Just think how much productive activity we could untax were we-the-people to collect some portion of that annual land rent for public purposes. And consider how unproductive the Lords of Land are. What have they done to earn that land rent? Is our "tradition" -- to let them keep it -- a wise or just one, or is it part of our wealth concentration structure?
Here are the two articles, with a couple of calculations added: (Notice that acreage is not even mentioned!)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-06/nyc-trump-co-op-dwellers-face-million-dollar-bills.html
NYC Trump Co-Op Dwellers Face Million-Dollar Bills
By Oshrat Carmiel Nov 6, 2014 4:16 PM ET
The ground beneath Trump Plaza, at 167 E. 61st St., is up for sale as land prices break records.
Manhattan’s surging land costs are leaving the shareholders of an East Side luxury co-operative with a tough choice: pay a hefty price to buy the land under the building, or face increasing bills to keep renting it.
The ground beneath Trump Plaza, at 167 E. 61st St., is up for sale as land prices break records. The co-op board has offered to buy the property for $185 million, a cost that would saddle residents with assessments that, for some, would top $1 million, said Adam Leitman Bailey, a New York real estate attorney who has been contacted by owners concerned about the deal before it goes into contract.
“People are calling me to stop this from happening,” said Bailey, who has reviewed board documents but hasn’t been officially retained. “People want to stop the assessment.”
The 31-year-old co-op, which makes annual rent payments to the family that owns the ground, is weighing its financial future at a time when rising prices for land make it attractive for investors to buy such property for a reliable stream of rental income. The board opted to put in a bid as it otherwise faces the prospect of a steep rent increase when the lease resets in 2024, Bailey said.
“The fact that the family put it up for sale should terrify the co-op,” said Joshua Stein, a Manhattan real estate attorney who isn’t involved in the transaction.
“Whatever opportunistic investor buys the land will probably be way more aggressive about the rent reset than either an estate or a group of heirs,” he said. “Someone who is buying it, is buying it specifically to squeeze out every last dollar of rent.”
Monthly Payments
Marc Cooper, president of the co-op board and vice chairman of investment-banking firm Peter J. Solomon Co., didn’t return a phone call left at his office yesterday seeking comment on the plan to purchase the ground.
Co-op residents buy shares in a corporation that owns the building, rather than getting a deed to the apartment itself, as they would in a condominium. Shareholders make monthly maintenance payments that collectively cover building costs such as mortgage payments, ground rent and operating expenses.
A Trump Plaza shareholder with a 1,000-square-foot (93-square-meter) one-bedroom apartment whose monthly maintenance fee is now about $2,100 would pay about $9,800 after the rent is recalculated in 10 years, Bailey said, citing a projection by the building’s co-op board. The rent increase would be about 8 percent of what the land value is in 2024, he said.
Record Prices
Buildable lots in Manhattan sold for an average of $657 a square foot in the third quarter, up 29 percent from a year earlier and an all-time high for the period, according to Massey Knakal Realty Services. Three purchases completed in the quarter were for more than $1,000 a square foot, the firm’s data show.
LVTfan here: That $657 per square foot is NOT per square foot of land (at 43,560 sq ft per acre, that would be just $28.6 million per acre, laughably low in Manhattan). Rather, it is per buildable square foot. Quick and dirty, if a, say, 20 story building can be built on a 10,000 sf footprint, constituting 200,000 sf, the calculation would be 200,000 times $657, or $131.4 million, for that 1/4 acre, which works out to over $500 million per acre. $500 million per acre -- compared to an acre of good agricultural land, at $5,000 per acre, that's 100,000:1. (And for those 3 purchases over $1,000 psf, add 50% to that ratio.)
Possibly difficult for those of us who see land which sells for $5,000 or $50,000 or even $500,000 per acre to fathom $500 million per acre. But that's reality!
Trump Plaza’s situation is different from most other co-operatives in Manhattan, which do own the land on which the building sits and make no rent payments. Co-op units with ground leases tend to sell at a discount because they have higher maintenance costs and buyers sometimes face challenges getting mortgage financing. Other ground-lease co-ops in New York include 995 Fifth Ave., the Excelsior at 303 E. 57th St. and Carnegie House at 100 W. 57th St.
Carnegie House
The ground beneath the 324-unit Carnegie House was purchased for $285 million to a group that includes Rubin Schron’s Cammeby’s International and real estate investor David Werner, Christa Segalini, a spokeswoman for Cammeby’s, said today. The 21-story building, with an entrance on Sixth Avenue, occupies an entire block front from 56th Street to 57th Street, according to real estate website Streeteasy.com.
For shareholders at Trump Plaza, buying the land beneath them means coming up with large sums of cash up front. Each owner was assessed a fee of about $2,329.40 a share, according to Bailey.
A resident of a two-bedroom unit who holds 440 shares in the corporation, for example, would be charged $1.02 million, Bailey said. A 1,600-square-foot three-bedroom apartment, worth 671 shares, would get a $1.56 million assessment. Residents get more shares the higher up their apartments are in the 39-story building.
The 154-unit Trump Plaza, at 61st Street and Third Avenue, was completed in 1983, according to StreetEasy. A 2,800-square-foot unit on the 32nd floor with views of Central Park is listed for sale at $3.95 million. The monthly maintenance charge for the three-bedroom, four-bathroom apartment is $7,228, according to the website.
LVTfan here: One might reasonably wonder how much (a) the sellers of the land were paying NYC in property taxes; (b) how much of the monthly "maintenance charge" for the condo is paid by the condo complex to the city in property taxes (which pay for the schools and lots of other public services) and how much is for the building and its services to the condo owners; and (c) how much the land share of that 32nd floor unit is. If a 1600sf apartment gets a $1.56 million assessment, the 32nd floor apartment, at 2800sf should be roughly twice that, or about $3 million. Thus, the $3.95 million asking price on the 32nd floor is about 4/7 of the total value, or 56%; the other 44% is land value.
Resale Value
The sale of the ground beneath the tower hasn’t gone into contract yet. Douglas Harmon and Adam Spies, brokers at Eastdil Secured LLC, are representing the owners, who are listed in public records as the estate of Donald S. Ruth and members of the Ruth family. Spies declined to comment on plans for the sale.
A purchase of the land by the co-op ultimately would add resale value to the building’s apartments, Stein said. Extinguishing the ground lease permanently removes the threat that rents will reset to unaffordable levels. With that uncertainty gone, future buyers would be willing to pay more for a unit in the tower, he said.
“If you’re the co-op, getting rid of that threat is a really good thing,” Stein said. “There’s a lot of value being created.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Oshrat Carmiel in New York at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kara Wetzel at [email protected] Christine Maurus
Here's the second article
http://therealdeal.com/blog/2014/11/06/werner-led-group-pays-285m-for-land-under-100-west-57th-street-sources/
Werner-led group pays $285M for land under 100 West 57th Street: sources
November 06, 2014 11:30AM By Adam Pincus
David Werner, a Borough Park investor who has wowed New York City with a series of big buys this year, partnered with Rubin Schron and the Cohen family to pay $285 million for the land under 100 West 57th Street, sources told The Real Deal. The 324-unit Carnegie House cooperative building is the ground tenant on the property.
A person close to the deal said the investment group closed yesterday on the purchase of the property, which is located at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 57th Street.
This is the third major acquisition by David Werner this year. He purchased 5 Times Square for $1.5 billion and the leasehold for the Mobil Building at 150 East 42nd Street, for $855 million. Werner, Schron and the Cohen family’s Carlton Associates did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Insiders expect to see more pricey sales of land under co-op buildings with resets looming.
In fact, the sale is being mirrored nearby with the marketing of the ground under the Trump Plaza at 167 East 61st Street, which has a rent reset in 2024. Eastdil Secured brokers Doug Harmon and Adam Spies have that listing.
The co-op building has a ground lease that runs for another 51 years with the property owner, currently paying about $4.4 million per year. In approximately 10 years, the rent for the ground lease payments will reset. That reset will be based on market values.
an average of $13,600 per year per family -- ignoring the commercial tenants |
Ground resets typically price the new rent at about 6 percent of the current market value.
Investment sales broker Robert Knakal, chairman of Massey Knakal Realty Services, estimated the value of the land to be at least $1,200 per square foot and up to $1,500 per foot, if the value of the retail is taken into consideration. Knakal is not involved in this property.
At that value, the land with 377,000 square feet of development rights, would be worth $452 million. That could work out to an annual rent payment of $27 million per year, if reset today, according to an analysis by TRD.
An average of $83,300 per family -- ignoring the commercial tenants |
To help fund the purchase, the group obtained a $180 million loan from Natixis Capital Markets in a deal arranged by Drew Anderman, a senior managing director at the mortgage brokerage firm Meridian Capital Group, insiders familiar with the deal said.
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