Two years ago, Ann Cutbill Lenane visited the salesroom for 15 Hudson Yards, an as yet-unbuilt condominium in the heart of Related Cos. and Oxford Properties Group’s massive, $25 billion redevelopment on the far west side of Manhattan. “I had heard about Hudson Yards,” says Lenane, a broker with Douglas Elliman. “I envisioned this wasteland where trains used to be.”
But one of her clients wanted to visit and so Lenane dutifully accompanied him. When she walked in, “I was blown away,” she says. There was the glassy, 88 story tower designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, but even more than that, she was impressed with Hudson Yards itself.
“There was going to be art and retail and incredible amounts of food,” she says. Lenane’s client ended up buying an apartment in the building, and soon after, so did Lenane, who will move into her two-bedroom apartment sometime in June. “I am taking a leap of faith,” she says. “I still have not seen my apartment, but I felt so comfortable, because it was [built by] Related.”
As Hudson Yards prepares its grand opening next week, Related is hoping Lenane’s experience will be replicated many times over, not just for 15 Hudson Yards, whose available apartments start at about $4.3 million for a one bedroom and go up to $32 million for a duplex penthouse, but also for 35 Hudson Yards, an even higher-end, 92 story condominium whose apartments start at about $5 million and go to $28.5 million, not including penthouses. The average 2018 sales price for luxury co-ops and condos was about $8.5 million, according to a Douglas Elliman Miller Samuel report. These are pricey properties.
“People are really really excited to be here,” says Sherry Tobak, a senior vice president at Related, who’s in charge of sales for both 15 and 35 Hudson Yards. “When the shops open and restaurants open and all the opportunities that exist here—that whole lifestyle is really drawing buyers in.”
But not everyone is sold. “This is not what we call prime [real estate],” says Donna Olshan, president of the luxury brokerage Olshan Realty Inc. “They may consider it prime because they’re building it, but it’s what I would consider an emerging location, which means it’s basically untested.”
A Gamble
The absence of an existing market for Hudson Yards’ housing stock is what Olshan calls “a gamble,” particularly within New York’s current, slumping housing market. The end of 2018 was the fifth consecutive quarter that the city’s co-op and condo market had a year over year sales decline, according to a report by Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel.
And so as New York’s condo sales struggle, the billion-dollar question is if Hudson Yards’ city within a city will prove enough of a draw to beat the rest of the market.
“It’s a very challenging market for anybody, and it’s a very price-sensitive market, and it’s a competitive market,” Olshan says.
The bright side, she continues, is that Hudson Yards’ combination of millions of square feet of office space, department stores, and the very cultural and residential amenities that Related is promoting, are a genuine first for New York. “I don’t think we’ve ever seen something like this,” she says. “I don’t remember New York ever having a dramatic transformation of an area like this, other than maybe Battery Park, years ago.”