As a result, it’s hard to gauge the “value” of the new apartment towers, let alone judge their potential success. “We’ll see how it pencils out for the developer and the people who buy,” she says.
Even Tobak acknowledges that the buildings, which are part of a development that will eventually include a public school, a park, a hotel and dozens of restaurants, represent a genuine first in New York. “It’s hard to compare this to anything,” says Tobak. “You take a typical $8 million apartment, you might find something similar without a view or amenities,” she continues. Some towers might have a pool or a robust concierge service, but not a view; others might have all of those things, but be miles away from residents’ offices. “I wish I could compare this to something,” Tobak says, “but I can’t.”
Sticking to Their Guns
For Tobak, this is obviously a benefit—Related can argue that, as an anomaly, the price structure for 15 Hudson Yards should be independent from other circumstances and headwinds. “Look, it’s not as though we’re blind as to the way the market is right now,” she says. “But we haven’t touched pricing.” Related’s strategy, she says, “is to stick to our guns. People want to be here, and they want to put their money where their mouths are.”
But at the end of the day, an apartment building is an apartment building. “What people are responding to is the quality of the construction and the dream of what the lifestyle is going to be like when it’s complete,” says Vickey Barron, a broker at Compass. The promise of that lifestyle is, Barron says, “the only thing that would make sense for this pricing.”
High Prices
The pricing Barron is referring to at 15 Hudson Yards starts at roughly $3,000 per square foot and extends to about $6,000 a square foot, well above 2018’s fourth quarter new luxury condo average of about $3,100.
For her part, Barron says she’s fan of the project, though it took her a little while. “Five years ago I thought they’d lost their minds,” she says. “I couldn’t wrap my head around the whole vision, but I took a client there Saturday and she was blown away and very inspired. [Related] should get some recognition for what they’ve created there.”
Roll Out of Bed
To date, Related says that it’s sold around 60 percent of the apartments at 15 Hudson Yards, though those numbers are impossible to verify until the deals actually close, a process that Tobak says is just beginning. “We’re starting closings at 15 Hudson Yards,” she says. “We have about 30 scheduled for March.”
Seventy percent of existing buyers, Tobak says, are drawn from the Tristate area. “Our biggest demo is up and down the West Side,” she says. “We’re pulling from Riverside South, the Meatpacking District, and West Chelsea—those are the people who are most attuned to what we’re doing.”
Two bedrooms are what Tobak calls “the sweet spot” for their sales efforts. “One of the fortunate things is that in Hudson Yards we have corporations moving in” to development’s office towers, she says. “You have a lot of buyers who live in Connecticut or Long Island or New Jersey and they need a place to call home for the week, and it’s so much easier for them to roll out of bed and get to work when they already work these incredibly long hours.”
Even for Lenane, whose office is on the Upper West Side, the proximity of those office towers was an added draw. “Knowing that there are these incredible anchors of retail space and office space that was always going to feed into my investment,” she says, meant that “there was always going to be a market because there was a built-in community already.”