Study Finds that Jersey City Leads on Luxury Apartment Construction

If it seems like everywhere you look there is a new “luxury” apartment building going up, you aren’t imagining it. In a new study by StorageCafe, Jersey City ranked 11th nationally for the percentage of new apartments falling into the luxury category.

According to the study, of 18,051 units that came online in the last decade in Jersey City, 95 percent made the luxury grade.

In Jersey City, apartments falling under the “luxury” label have an average size of over 859 sq. ft., about 200 sq. ft. bigger than those in the non-luxury category and include “lifestyle-centered amenities” like roof decks, gyms and swimming pools.

In New York City, by contrast, 84 percent of new residential apartments qualified as luxury. In Newark, the number was 60 percent.

The issue of affordability has roiled Jersey City over the last few years. In December, the City Council approved an inclusionary zoning ordinance that mandated 10 and 15 percent affordable set-asides depending on adjusted median income in a given neighborhood. The ordinance represented a victory for affordable housing advocates who brought a successful court challenge to a controversial 2019 ordinance that required as little as five percent affordable housing in new projects. The lawsuit, spearheaded by, among others, former councilman Rolando Lavarro, was filed by the Fair Share Housing Center.

The study looked at apartment construction evolution in the country’s top 100 cities from 2012 to 2021. Only apartment complexes with 50+ units were included in the research.

StorageCafe is an online platform that provides storage unit listings across the nation. The national apartment construction data for the study came from the real estate “intelligence” firm Yardi Matrix and considered the country’s top 100 cities by population.