Paul Bass Photo
Work proceeds on some of the hundreds of new apartments cropping up between Olive and Chapel streets.
Horsford: “Not just ‘@yale.edu’ anymore.”
Insider reveals: “It’s not just ‘@yale.edu’ emails anymore.”
That’s who’s moving in to all these new market-rate apartments in town, according to Carol Horsford.
And she should know. Probably better than anyone else in town.
Horsford runs the 30-person Farnam Realty Group, a top commercial real-estate broker as well as a top rental management company. Her firm often gets hired to find the tenants to move into new apartment complexes popping up on previously vacant land all over Downtown and nearby neighborhoods amid the city’s biggest building boom in generations.
So, during an appearance Thursday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program, Horsford was asked the question on many people’s minds these days: Who are all these human beings willing to pay thousands of dollars a month to rent small new apartments?
“It’s not just ‘@yale.edu’ emails anymore,” Horsford responded. “It’s people who love New Haven.”
For instance, her firm has begun leasing The Elm, a soon-to-open five-story apartment building rising on a vacant lot next to 100 Howe St. between Edgewood and Elm. Monthly rents for 425-square-foot studios there start at $1,595; for 510 – 675 square-foot one-bedroom apartments at $1,750; for 900 – 1,040 square-foot two bedrooms at $2,895; and 1,610-square-foot four-bedroom suites at $5,500.
The first five tenants signing leases include an elderly couple looking for a fun place to retire, a couple of couples in their 30s or 40s coming for jobs, and a veteran looking for a place to locate after finishing military service, Horsford said.
From 18 High to Whitney Modern and the Audubon, new luxury complexes are already fully leased, with waiting lists in some cases, Horsford reported. Meanwhile, other new market-rate projects are taking shape.
The first wave of new complexes often filled with Yale graduate students or people affiliated with the professional schools or Yale New Haven Hospital.
Increasingly added to the mix are people coming into town and looking to live simply, in 570 – 700 square-foot one-bedrooms, say, with washer-dryers, microwaves, and air-conditioning on site, but not looking to store lots of stuff, Horsford said.
She said that fits into a larger pattern of smaller cities drawing young singles and empty-nesters looking to live near restaurants and galleries and theaters and generally more activities than can be found in the suburbs. Or, in the case of one recent older client who sold a main home in Woodbridge, an urban place to hang out and sleep in addition to a shoreline home, especially in winter months.
Where does that leave New Haveners who are already here?
Other argue that the vast majority of new apartments, built on vacant land, aren’t replacing any existing housing — and in fact help lower rents in existing surrounding apartments by easing a supply crunch, while bringing needed new tax revenue to town along with customers for local stores.
Horsford falls in the latter camp. She gave the example of the luxury Corsair apartments built on State Street. A landlord who owns an older home on nearby Mechanic Street didn’t want to invest in renovations to compete with the Corsair’s rents. So he had to drop the rent. Horsford said she has placed families on Section 8 rental assistance in many apartments like that one, enabling families to live in neighborhoods with good schools.
In the interview, Horsford also discussed the explosion in sale prices for homes throughout Greater New Haven during the Covid-19 pandemic.
That’s peaking somewhat for middle-class housing, she said. She gave the example of a single-family home listed with her agency in Hamden for $279,000. On May 26, during the peak, it immediately attracted seven offers, with bidders offering to pay over $300,000. An offer was accepted. But six weeks later, the buyer backed out. When it went back on the market, fewer people were showing up at open houses. Some offers came in, but not as many, and not for above the asking price.
Click on the video to watch the full discussion with Horsford on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven,” including about how she built up her company over the past decade and her own personal bout with Covid.