September 18, 2025
While 99 is still the magic number for most New York City multifamily developers these days, some apartment developers are still going big.
Of the 281 multifamily construction permits filed in the first half of the year, 19 were for buildings with 100 or more units, according to an analysis of Department of Buildings data by the Real Estate Board of New York.
On its face, those projects would appear encouraging at a time when the prevailing narrative is that not enough housing is being built.
But developers and brokers say that the developments don’t actually serve many of the middle-income residents that lawmakers hoped to target when they passed the massive City of Yes rezoning and 485-x, the state’s new tax abatement for NYC mixed-income rental housing.
“Most of the registered projects are relatively small, under 25 units per building on average, which works for lower-scale, lower-density areas,” Besen Partners Chief Sales Officer Ron Cohen said. “But bigger picture, [that] isn’t making a huge impact on the goal of 500,000 new units.”
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Ronald H. Cohen