City Population Barely Grew in the ’00s

according to NYT several years ago...

it was because the "ethnics" who lived 2 families in a 1 bedrooms uptown were being priced out by "heather" from short hills to start her advertising "career" (read borderline prostitution)funded by her parents.

well, what was the supply in 2000?

Supply in 2000 was 170,000 less than 2010. The population grew by 166,000. So, if it is simply a matter of "supply and demand", what drove the prices upward? Absentee owners?

"the number of homes and apartments in the city swelled by 170,000"

How many people can these 170,000 units house?

440k... using the average household size of 2.59 for the city

That's a 5% potential increase in population... but if population was flat, that means 440k more beds that weren't really needed....

"Absentee owners?"

Yup.

If it wasn't a big factor in NYC, you wouldn't see "pied-de-terre" mentioned in so many real estate listings.

Sorry, misspelled it: 'pied a terre'

Mentioned in 770 plus sales listings today on SE.

Maybe we all got fatter and need more room.

so many pied a terrorists! - do not tell Matt

If NYC population barely grew, what warrants all this housing?

Another theory: many units have been combined in the last 10 years, as families stayed and wanted larger apartments. How many units were thus "destroyed"?

In my building the number of apartments decreased by 14.5% from 1992-2011, almost all in the boom years.

New York Leaves ‘Nasty’ Reputation Behind As Families Crowd In
2011-03-25 04:01:00.16 GMT

(For more stories on the census, see TOP CENS .)

By Caroline Salas
March 25 (Bloomberg) -- Martin Fridson said suburban
friends used to chide him for raising two children in Manhattan.
“Central Park had a national reputation as being a very
dangerous place,” said Fridson, 58, global credit strategist at
BNP Paribas Asset Management Inc. Raised in Detroit, he has
lived on the Upper West Side, near the expansive park, since
1980 and said that outsiders don’t always see the benefits city
dwellers appreciate.
“People sort of wondered how you could possibly raise
children in New York,” he said of the city that in the last
decade has persevered through a historic terrorist attack and a
severe financial crisis.
“Their perceptions are out of date,” Fridson said,
describing a “tremendous renaissance” on Amsterdam and
Columbus Avenues near his three-bedroom apartment.
Manhattan’s population grew 3.2 percent to 1,585,873,
outpacing New York state’s 2.1 percent growth over the past
decade, according to 2010 Census data released yesterday. The
boost defied fears of urban flight after the Sept. 11 attacks
and the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
New York City, the most populous place in the country with
8,175,133 residents, also attracted more residents at the same
time that its crime rate fell, census and city data show.

Felonies Decline

The incidence of seven major felony offenses declined to
105,115 in 2010, down 43 percent from 184,652 in 2000, according
to the New York City Police Department. That includes reports of
murder, rape, robbery and burglary.
“The city itself has turned around the perception that
it’s just a nasty, dirty place to live,” said Peter Francese, a
demographics analyst who founded American Demographics magazine,
now part of Advertising Age. New York has “created the
perception that it’s not only safe, it’s hot,” he said.
The median co-op and condo sale price increased to $880,000
in 2010, more than double the 2001 figure of $430,000, according
to a report this year by real estate appraiser Miller Samuel
Inc., which covers the greater New York metropolitan area. The
report was based on sales by Prudential Douglas Elliman, a real
estate firm with more than 60 offices.

‘Influx of Demand’

“I’m not so sure we would have had the influx of demand
for people to make this their home” if former New York City
Mayor Rudy Giuliani and current Mayor Michael Bloomberg hadn’t
focused on “the small stuff, like graffiti on the subways,
trash and quality of life issues,” said Jonathan Miller,
president of New York-based Miller Samuel.
Bloomberg, 69, yesterday said the decennial count fell
short in counting the city’s residents -- and that may affect
the city’s share of federal aid. Bloomberg, citing an increase
in immigrants and reports of overcrowding, said New York was
shortchanged by 225,000 people in the 2010 Census.
He said the census couldn’t have been accurate in finding a
1,343-person increase in the borough of Queens, which has
experienced growth and overcrowding in the past decade because
of an influx of immigrants.
“It just doesn’t make sense,” he said. “We will try to
show the Census Bureau where they erred.” The Bloomberg
administration will formally challenge the findings, said Mark
LaVorgna, a spokesman for the mayor.
The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News
parent Bloomberg LP.

Further Examination

Census director Robert Groves said yesterday that the
agency would further examine population numbers. He said that
the “specific” issue of an undercount in New York had yet to
be addressed, and that an analysis and samples will be pursued
through 2012.
“This is the time when many mayors receive counts that
disappoint,” Groves said. “We haven’t drilled down yet, and we
will do so.”
Young white professionals are responsible for the bulk of
the growth, and many are choosing to stay in Manhattan after
they have children, according to William Frey, a demographer at
the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
“These are people who can afford to have kids in
Manhattan,” Frey said. “Most of the people who move to the
city are young, and if they have kids they’re going to be there
for a longer period of time.”
Jeff Bloch, 51, is raising his 7-year-old daughter and 5-
year old son in midtown Manhattan as a single gay father. He
said he wanted his children in a place of diversity.
“It’s truly a terrific place to raise kids because
everything is in walking distance, and they’re exposed to so
many wonderful things like the theater, the culture,” said
Bloch, a self-employed media trainer.

Subway Rats

Bloch grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, and said his
children’s memories of childhood will be far different from his.
His daughter, Julia, has asked to sit by the window while riding
the subway so she can look for rats, and she caught Mozart’s
“The Magic Flute” on an outdoor screen by Lincoln Center last
summer while walking home from a picnic, he said.
Manhattan had the fastest-growing white, non-Hispanic
population of any count in the state, adding 8.2 percent for a
population of 761,493. Statewide, the number of white non-
Hispanics fell 3.9 percent to 11,304,247.
The number of white, non-Hispanic children in Manhattan
rose 22.5 percent to 77,556. Asian children rose 2.7 percent to
19,520. Black children fell 30.2 percent to 38,199, and Hispanic
children fell 21.3 percent to 88,438.

Black Population Falls

The number of blacks in Manhattan fell 12.5 percent to
205,340; citywide, it fell 5.1 percent to 1,861,295. It was the
first time since the 1850 Census that the number of blacks
declined.
The largest gains across the city were among the Asian
population, which grew 31.8 percent to 1,028,119. Hispanics rose
8.1 percent to 2,336,076. Non-Hispanic whites fell 2.8 percent
to 2,722,904. They are still the city’s largest racial group,
making up 33.3 percent of the population.
Interpreted another way, two of three New Yorkers are now
minorities, according to the census data.
While Wall Street was at the center of the credit crisis
that began in August 2007, the New York economy has recovered
faster than much of the nation as the city benefited
disproportionately from the government bailout of the financial
system. Jobs in the finance industry grew 1.5 percent in New
York in December from the year-ago period, compared with a 0.8
percent loss across the U.S., according to data from the Federal
Reserve Bank of New York.

Housing Market

“We didn’t have the kind of subprime crisis that the rest
of the country had, where mortgage brokers clustered large
volumes of subprime loans in contiguous counties,” said Rae
Rosen, senior economist at the New York Fed. “As a result, New
York City didn’t suffer comparable job losses for residential
construction workers or mortgage brokers.”
The housing market also held up better because co-ops
comprise three-quarters of owner-occupied residences and their
boards have done a better job of vetting the finances of
borrowers than banks did, said Miller of Miller Samuel, the
consulting firm.
“Density in New York City is all about property land
values, because if there’s a five-story building that’s not
returning to its owners much in the way of income, they’ll rip
that building down and put up a 30-story building,” said
Francese, the demographic analyst.
“The demand for residential real estate outstrips supply,
hence you go up,” he said. “You can’t build out over the East
River, for God’s sake.”

supply was short then; supply is short now
prices went up because more people borrowed money to buy
then they all raced in a panic to buy because of the acceleration in appreciation
the mortgage money was the biggest factor, but supply was short then and is still short
it's just that most people can't afford what they want, if anything at all

"Another theory: many units have been combined in the last 10 years, as families stayed and wanted larger apartments. How many units were thus "destroyed"?"

Of course, follow the logic, and it contradicts the point. If the population increase came from children in these apartments, then the combination didn't have a meaningful effect on supply....

Think of the situation with 4 people living now in what was 2 one bedrooms vs. 2 or 3 that were there before.

If there are more families, that means LESS units would actually be needed.