The Municipal Arts Society of New York’s (MAS) map, titled “Accidental Skyline,” shows all available air rights in Manhattan. According to MAS “The thought process behind the project was that by raising awareness, neighborhood residents could decide to take a more active role, if they so choose, in the approval process that a potential developer would need to go through,” since most air rights transactions are private transactions between developers and property owners.
The average price per square foot for condos in Manhattan last month was $1,781. That’s finished condos that you can move into. How much is air? According to the Department of City Planning, Manhattan air rights average $225 per square foot citywide. (To put the price of NYC air rights in perspective, the national housing average price per square foot is $64.44, according to the US Census Bureau. So, yes, NYC air is more than three times as expensive than a house in most of the country.)
And these prices have been rising fast: Tenantwise, a New York real-estate services company, says that air rights rose 47 percent in one year to 2013. M. Myers Mermel, chief executive of Tenantwise, told the Wall Street Journal: “Air rights have matured into an indispensable financial component to a number of large developments. In some cases, developers have paid the same price a square foot for air rights as they did to buy the land… [air rights] are the top revenue producers in any building because they become the new upper floors.”
If these prices leave you gasping, you might need to look for something other than air (rights) to breathe.
