Air Rights

You can call 311 for the website from city Planning http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/home.html enter the address and the cross streets or the Boro Block Lot (BBL) or BIN ( Building ID number) and the system will display the data for the address, Air rights is tagged with a suffix like 12xx Avenue A Air RTS or AIR RIGHTS. I cant locate the address locator web page may be Department of Finance ( ACRIS) has similar information. The best place is 311 folks again you need the building address as per city planning or filed with DOF..

Thanks so much, garyz01. Really appreciate it.

This probably won't help you, but if you are worried about your view because of a very low building, lot, etc, then chances are that it is only a matter of time until something is built. The real question is... when will it be built? Because of how long it takes to go through the process if nothing is being done yet you can probably give yourself a few years of buffer time before something has the potential of going up.

Additionally, you can go to PropertyShark.com and they have air right information. That might be under the paid features though.

If you can provide us with your location/view in question I'm sure we could assist you more.

A really great question. I tried both Acris and PropertyShark and had slightly better luck with the latter. However, I do not subscribe to the paid features of PropertyShark.
http://www.nycpropertyresearch.com/mason/Maps/?map=nyc2

My husband asked his friend (who's a commercial RE attorney) your question today and was told that it's often a quite complicated search.

Sorry it was supposed to link to an aerial view of air rights for NYC.

Article on selling air rights.

http://www.habitatmag.com/index.php/habitat/publication-content/2007_november/featured_articles_from_our_print_magazine/selling_air_rights

Thanks MRussell & lobster. I'll check those sites out. The building in question is 2 Cornelia, facing South along 6th ave...329 & 331 6th Ave could potentially block the view.

jhunterny, did you have any luck finding out about the air rights for your building? I'm very curious about how to research air rights since so many buildings are right next to much lower buildings which could be purchased in the future for new construction.

MRussel, yes, I have a question about air rights. I saw an apartment at 1200 Broadway that was interesting, but the windows all looked over a shorter building to the rear. I passed for several reasons, but one was concern about the air rights to the building behind which would block all the light to this apartment. Do you know anything about this situation? Thanks in advance for any input you can give me.

I have been told that this is a dangerous topic for DIY research, that the only safe way to find out is to pay an architect or a zoning lawyer to research the site lines. The complex interplay of zoning, historic district, FAR, and air rights regulations are, well, complex. Having said that, I have seen copies of agreements in air rights on ACRIS, accessed through Property Shark. They might be labeled without specifics (such as "Agreement") but if you read the agreements you can see if there has been money exchanged for air rights.

Even without a prohibition on development, you may get a degree of confidence that the build-able envelope just isn't big enough to make it worth anyone's while to develop it to the max. (At least until the economics change radically.)

But zoning laws can change, or an exception might be granted, so you never "know". Depending on your personal appetite for risk, however, you might take comfort in the fact that a site somehow has not been developed over the last few Booms, then calculate when you think that environment might change enough to change the development calculations.

@newbie: I have no specific info about 1200 Bway, but there have been several towers built nearby in the last few years who *might* have bought up surrounding air rights. Wouldn't surprise me. Did you ask the agent? A pro would know the answer AND the way to prove it to you, if a listing has an obvious risk of losing a view.

I bought in the late 90s in a building developed in the late 80s. My apartment overlooks two shorter buildings to the Hudson River, so naturally I was concerned about the possibility of further development. At first, I took some comfort that both buildings were in an historic district. Subsequently, I found solid evidence that my view was fairly well protected, thanks to a lead from the former condo board president, who tipped me on the history of our building when he was personally selling a unit that overlooked the same two buildings. He said that the developer of our condo had purchased the "air rights" of the two adjacent shorter buildings so that he could develop our building larger. I then looked on ACRIS for any evidence of these transactions and found the "air rights" purchase agreements recorded to the property block and lot numbers of all three buildings. Property Shark will give you the current or historic property block and lot numbers for all NYC buildings.