00:00These two townhomes in the West Village are being combined into one double-wide mega-mansion,
00:05and they're popping up all over Manhattan.
00:07In a city struggling with a housing shortage, ultra-rich buyers looking for a suburban-style
00:11home have found a solution.
00:13By two, maybe three, historic brownstones, combine them and turn them into one luxurious
00:18private residence.
00:19The trend is especially visible in the West Village as well as the Upper East and West
00:23Sides of Manhattan, historic neighborhoods long favored by the wealthy since the Gilded
00:27Age. Like a super-yacht or a private island, mega-mansions have become the latest status
00:32symbol. Those same neighborhoods that have seen townhome combinations have been caught
00:36up in a larger wave of mansions driven by roll-ups. That's when a buyer consolidates the units
00:41of an individual multi-family building into a single-family home.
00:45A Bloomberg News analysis found that at least 9,300 apartments have disappeared city-wide
00:50since 2004 as a result of these roll-ups.
00:53While these mansions only make up a small slice of New York City's housing stock, these roll-ups
00:57and combos have had a strong impact on row-house-heavy neighborhoods.
01:00In the West Village alone, one out of every six small multi-family buildings has been rolled
01:05up into a single-family home since 2004.
01:08While the city is focused on boosting housing supply through zoning changes, the quiet disappearance
01:13of homes through deteriorating conditions on one end and luxury mergers on the other has
01:17drawn far less scrutiny.
Comments