Amazon To Spark Apartment Boom With New Second Headquarters Locations

Amazon is expected to spark an apartment boom in the Long Island City and Crystal City areas of New York and Washington where the company has announced it will place its additional headquarters locations.

So RentCafe put together a look at what will be the impact in terms of rents and apartment supply in these two areas that are hubs for millennial workers.

Here are the apartment boom main findings:

• With a high occupancy rate of 98.2% in Long Island City (LIC), future Amazon employees may have a hard time finding an apartment for rent near work. There’s a silver lining, though: a total of approx. 15,400 units are under construction, planned or in a prospective phase in LIC.
• Amazon’s announcement is definitely bound to speed up the apartment construction in the area, which is already seeing an increased number of units entering the market. LIC is New York City’s hottest neighborhood, but also in the US, with the most new apartments delivered after the recession, 12,500 units.
• In Crystal City there were no major developments in the last couple of years. However, besides the 3,100 units under construction, planned or prospective, future Amazon employees would have access to more than 205K units currently in the entire metro.
• What type of employees is Amazon expected to find in the two neighborhoods? As of 2016, Crystal City boasts a 52% share of Millennials. Long Island City, on the other hand, has a Millennial population of 43%.
• The percentage of people holding a Bachelor’s degree or higher in Crystal City is a whopping 85%, while in LIC it’s about half that, 45%.
• Both neighborhoods have witnessed above-average increases in the monthly rent over the past year. The average rent in Crystal City is currently $2,387, up 5% y-o-y. Meanwhile, Long Island City apartments are already seeing steep prices, $3,458 as of October 2018, up 5.1% y-o-y.

The average rents and supply data comes from Yardi Matrix, RentCafe sister company, which monitors the apartment market. You can find the full report here: https://www.rentcafe.com/blog/rental-market/long-island-city-and-crystal-city-expecting-an-apartment-boom/