Why New York’s Billionaires’ Row Is Half Empty

Manhattan’s skyscrapers aren’t really built for people anymore.

Presenter - Fred Mills
Producer - Jaden Urbi
Camera Op and Video Editing - Aaron Wood
Motion Graphics - Vince North
Executive Producers - Fred Mills and James Durkin
Associate Producers - Liam Marsh, Adam Savage and Tim Gibson
US Travel and Logistics - Caroline Mills

Special thanks to Ryan Serhant, Matthew Soules, Samuel Stein and The Dronalist.

Additional research:

#construction #architecture #skyscrapers

Ripping and/or editing this video is illegal and will result in legal action.

© 2021 The B1M Limited

[buba_Dukz]

Wow! Wow! Wow! Just wow! They did it guys. They kept their promise. The half an hour video from the best channel for construction in the world just gave us the best treat of the year. I love you B1M. Your videos are spectacular. I can write almost an entire book about how much y’all have helped me in learning about construction projects around the world right here from the comfort of my home 📱 🛋 . You guys are the absolute best of the best . I’m grateful for rocking with y’all for over a year now I believe. Keep up the spectacular work mate 👏🏾🤍 🚧 And Sending loads of love right here from The Bronx NewYork City 😊

[JW]

The one thing that amazed me the most when I moved to the US 10 years ago, was lobbying. I believe it's called bribery in the rest of the world.

[strodey]

I remember walking along the edge of Central park a few years ago, people sleeping on the benches in the shadows of these $100m empty apartments. The stark contrast in humanty.

[smartbart]

Plus, those empty apartments are cooled all throughout the summer because constant change in temperature damages furniture and art, so when the city asks residents to decrease their power usage to avoid blackouts I'm guessing it's mostly the poor who do it.

[bil]

There is a class action suit against Park Tower- 432 Park Ave, by it's residents. Everything from the building vibrating to the elevators stopping whenever the wind blows over 10mph to leaks, the list goes on. The plans were pushed through the city planning commission, and it was never pointed out that it would cast a shadow right across central park.

[BlyGilmore]

The scary thing is this move to own housing as an investment isn't just restricted to these ultra-wealthy properties like Billionaire's Row. More and more 'normal' homes are being scooped up as an investment at the detriment of people who'd actually like to live there.

[philstory]

This part really rubbed me the wrong way, When Serhant said "Smart people end up being incentivized to make money and their lifestyle increases" Ryan Serhant is not self made, his father was the vice chairman at a company with 3.9 trillion USD in assets under management. He was born in the purple.

[RGld-jgrs]

I live in Melbourne and definitely have felt this, in my building there are easily 200-300 apartments, but given the amount of neighbours I've encountered and mailboxes I've seen empty, I think no more than 100 are occupied.
At one point for almost a month my roommates and I realised we were the only occupied apartment in our entire level

[thatisabsolutelykooooge]

If there are “$6.7B worth of condos still on the market” that simply means that they’re not worth $6.7B…

[rossmanngroup]

The retail stores are empty the offices are empty, and billionaire's row is empty. Welcome to NYC!

[thehoboman]

The engineering that goes into these buildings is always fascinating, but the economic/societal side of things is definitely troubling.

[koertdubois]

"Architecture as spatial financial form, not as shelter or cultural manifestation." Nailed it. Bless you guys.

[kabirjavaid]

This episode was enlightening, especially for someone who studies affordable housing. It's amazing how you connected billionaire housing to lack of affordable housing. What you have uncovered is the fact that billionaire housing developers bought off future development rights off of affordable housing development and concentrated all that housing into empty buildings. The air rights were not from buildings that were accommodating billionaires. The air rights belonged to properties that were accommodating people from middle class and even poor. Now, those development rights are embedded in empty buildings that belong to super rich. To make matters worse, They keep building more meaning more air rights belonging to middle class and even poor will no longer exist. Meaning no more future accommodation for these individuals. Thank you for your work.

[ekszentrik]

Dude, not just the height and thinness of these buildings is skyrocketing, but also your production quality. Mad props.

[dr.kinderman]

So basically, the amount of wealth that's been generated has become so great that there need to be things you can actually buy with it. So these units in these skyscrapers are used. The draw not being prestige or the unit itself, but simply being something valuable enough to represent the wealth you have. It's like a giant pile of money basically

[RedPandaStan]

I like how this channel has gone from discussing and praising the architecture of billionaire's row to pointing out how fucking terrible it is for literally everyone. Character development.

[IGinaI]

Everytime I see something like that, I find it just so grotesque that there are people on our planet without enough money and recourses to afford education, a home, maybe even food, while in the same moment there are people able to spend more than 100, 000 million dollars on a place they never even step a foot in.

[mauritsbol]

I have been watching 10 minutes of this. And i want to urge you. Please make more of this. This documentary style video is absolutely what i love about construction, how it is so integrated in human society and how it sometimes raises questions and issues. I think this should not be the only videos you should continue to make but pleaase make more of this. This was great!

[thatcrazykid]

The overfocus on the hyper-wealthy seems to be a serious problem for the construction industry. Demand for regular homes is higher than ever and yet developers still aren't building enough of them.

[GrinerB]

That real estate guy justified rich people's ability to game the system by listing a host of taxes that normal people also have to pay while completely ignoring the benefits the rich people have that normal people don't have access to...

Rich people having to pay sales tax on their nice shit doesn't provoke any sympathy out of me...