( photo and map credit: Toll Brothers)Even if our Community Board just voted to approve the spot rezoning needed by Toll Brothers for their condo development along the Gowanus Canal, it may never get off the ground. In yet another interview, Brother Robert Toll seems to be down on New York City and its housing market. Here is an article from Floyd Norris in the New York Times.
Toll on New York: It’s Dead
Robert I. Toll, the chief executive of the luxury home builder Toll Brothers, used to say New York City was the bright spot for home sales. No more.
“New York City was a nice stand-alone beacon,” he said in a conference call this afternoon. “Now it has joined the rest of the country.” That happened, he said, in mid-September after the financial crisis worsened.
“The financial industry has to lose 100,000 jobs,” he said, before his colleagues evidently tried to tell him that was too negative, and he amended his statement to say the loss could be smaller. “That’s got to have an impact,” he added.
One more negative: “The foreign market is not there as it was to support the price of condos,” he said.
He said that one condo project that his company is building in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn was now being marketed as “rent-to-own.”
Mr. Toll was asked in the call if any members of Congress were on board to back his plea to subsidize home prices. He said there had been talks, but he had no endorsements.
As to why the government should be subsidizing home builders when there is an oversupply of houses, he said the country needed the construction jobs.
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