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ew York City is projected to finish more than 50,000 new housing units by the end of 2025, a pace that would meet Mayor Eric Adams’ decade‑long goal of 500,000 additional homes. In the first six months of 2025, developers completed 25,674 residential units and filed plans for nearly 12,000 more, surpassing the planning totals of 2023 and 2024. If this momentum continues, the city could close the year with over 50,000 completions—well above last year’s record of just over 30,000, the highest since 1965.

    Dan Garodnick, director of the Department of City Planning, said the surge “will make a meaningful difference in bringing down costs and addressing our city’s housing crisis,” but acknowledged that more work remains. The spike is largely a legacy of the pre‑2022 rush to start projects before the 421‑a tax exemption expired. With many of those projects now coming online, the question is whether the city can sustain this level of production without similar incentives.

    Brooklyn led the way, completing roughly 12,000 units, followed by Queens (≈6,500), the Bronx (≈4,600), Manhattan (≈2,600), and Staten Island (≈300). Jonathan Miller, an appraiser, noted that the long‑term goal is to restrain rental price growth, while the immediate focus is on adding supply to meet demand.

    Permit filings for new construction totaled just under 12,000 units citywide—higher than the first halves of 2023 and 2024, which each saw fewer than 10,000 filings, but still below the number of units already finished. Manhattan led permit activity with about 4,400 applications, most of which were for office‑to‑residential conversions—a strategy increasingly embraced in the post‑pandemic era. Christopher Sadowski highlighted that the current boom is tied to projects launched before the 421‑a break ended in 2022, raising doubts about whether construction can keep pace.

    Andrew Fine, policy director at Open New York, warned that the track is not likely to stay at 50,000 units per year moving forward and that policies must improve to sustain growth. Many industry voices remain skeptical of the 485‑x replacement for 421‑a, which has failed to attract the same developer interest. Some hope that other measures—such as the City of Yes zoning reforms and the 467‑m tax incentive for office‑to‑residential conversions—could help bridge the gap, but without stronger financial and regulatory support, advocates say construction may soon taper off.