New York multifamily filings collapse as large projects vanish

New York City's filing data is beginning to show the cost of the 421-a exit. Developers filed plans for roughly 9.2 million square feet of new construction in the second quarter of 2026, a 56% sequential drop in square footage, while new-building filings fell 33% to 387, according to the Real Estate Board of New York's New Building Construction Pipeline Report, first covered by Connect CRE. The multifamily slice makes the numbers harder to shrug off: 172 proposed multiple-dwelling buildings totaling 8,064 units, down 52% from the first quarter and less than half the quarterly pace the city says it needs to build 700,000 homes over the next decade.

Within that pipeline, filings for projects with 100 units or more fell from 25 in the first quarter to just 9 in the second, while the quarter's multifamily filings concentrated below the 100-unit threshold. REBNY attributes the shift to the city's development pipeline moving away from projects vested under 421-a and toward projects that must rely on 485-x or other funding programs.

Basha Gerhards, REBNY's executive vice president of public policy, called the decline 'a warning sign that New York has not yet created the conditions and incentives needed to maintain the momentum of consistently delivering new homes at the scale required.' The city's own arithmetic puts that warning in numbers: New York now says it needs 17,500 units per quarter to build 700,000 homes over the next decade, and the latest proposed multifamily total ran at less than half that pace while the large-project count that would carry it shrank by two-thirds in a single quarter.

The 100-plus-unit segment carries the real weight: those are the projects that most directly serve the city's housing target, and even if every smaller filing proceeds, the total proposed units suggest a pipeline still far short of the pace required. For allocators monitoring development exposure, that argues for caution on new multifamily construction in New York and a more supportive view of existing stabilized assets, which face less future supply.

For investors, less future supply generally supports rents and occupancy at existing buildings, which helps the underwrite for owners of stabilized multifamily in the city. But the same contraction means a leaner market for sponsors whose business model depends on building; the projects that will supply the next decade of housing are being filed in smaller increments, and small deals do not fill the hole.

The 421-a era is effectively over, and the 485-x replacement has not yet shown it can carry large-scale filings. Until a developer can underwrite a 100-plus-unit building under the new rules, filings are likely to keep tracking closer to 8,000 units than to the pace the city's housing plan assumes. The next quarterly filing report will show whether the 25-to-9 collapse was a one-quarter adjustment or the new baseline.