New York Nation

reprints


Whenever you ask a real estate pro why they’re bullish about a particular corner of Gotham, they usually give you the same answer: There’s only so much Manhattan to go around.

It’s true—Manhattan is a limited commodity. The price of its real estate will remain expensive for the foreseeable future. Developers have compensated for this by spending the last eight years hustling toward the still (sort of) cheap parts of Brooklyn and Long Island City. But even those once reasonable markets have become ludicrously expensive.

SEE ALSO: Generational Buyers Are Feeling Flusher in New York’s Outer Boroughs

So, what is a real estate investor or developer to do?

Last fall, when Commercial Observer put out our annual Owners Magazine, we asked the top landlords which markets were they investing in outside of New York and why.

Some of the answers, like Miami, were to be expected. Others were a little more unexpected, such as Detroit. But there were some interesting reasons why Detroit made for a good investment. (Indeed, the Fisher and Albert Kahn Buildings in Downtown Detroit, two of the greatest Art Deco masterpieces of the Midwest, sold to HFZ for a mere $12.2 million on Auction.com in June of last year.)

Sometimes New Yorkers forget that our city is not the center of the universe. There is a big beautiful country outside of the five boroughs. And there’s an accompanying real estate market.

One of the things that has gotten clearer over the last few years is that very few things remain local any more. The trends that we see here often get played out elsewhere. The players that have set these trends in motion are often making the same plays on a field out west.

So we decided to dig a little deeper into five markets some of New York’s best developers are also invested in like Detroit, Miami, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Washington, D.C. (and Cuba, to boot!) and size up what they have to offer.