Cost segregation in the Bronx

The buildings

The Bronx is a borough of apartment houses. The five- and six-story buildings that line the Grand Concourse and fill University Heights, Fordham, Morris Heights and Highbridge were built between the wars, many of them in the Art Deco style the Concourse is known for, and they are typically held in portfolios by owners who have run them for decades. Nearly all are rent-stabilized. Their owners have replaced boilers, roofs, windows, elevators and intercoms, upgraded electrical service and renovated apartments one at a time, so a building that changes hands is a mix of components of very different ages.

The South Bronx has been rebuilt over the past thirty years, first with publicly assisted housing in Melrose and Morrisania and more recently with market-rate towers on the Mott Haven waterfront. New residential buildings in the borough commonly include a community facility, medical offices or a supermarket at the base. Most were financed with construction loans and monitored month by month, which leaves exact records.

Hunts Point and Port Morris hold the borough’s industrial property: food distribution, warehouses, and older loft buildings now used for storage and offices. Fordham Road, the Hub at 149th Street and the shopping streets under the elevated lines are lined with older retail buildings with offices or apartments above.

Records

Owners of stabilized buildings keep files for major capital improvements and for individual apartment improvements, and those files are as good a record of cost as a study could ask for. Publicly assisted projects carry regulatory agreements and cost certifications. For everything else there are Department of Buildings filings, the appraisal from the last financing, and the building itself.

Common situations

A recent purchaser of a stabilized apartment house, with an appraisal and a capital plan, is the usual case in the Bronx. An owner who has just completed a major project, such as a new boiler plant, a roof or a program of apartment renovations, is another. The third is the developer of a new residential building who holds it after completion and has the full construction file. The services page describes how each is approached.

Site visits

A visit to a Bronx apartment house begins with the superintendent, who generally lives in the building and knows what was replaced and when. The boiler room, the compactor and laundry rooms, the roof, the elevator machine room and a selection of apartments are covered. Where an owner holds several similar buildings, they can often be visited the same day. Industrial property is visited during working hours with the tenant’s cooperation.

The firm takes its name from the High Bridge, whose eastern end stands in the neighborhood named for it. The page on multifamily cost segregation describes the components typically examined in buildings like these.

Other areas served

Highbridge Studies works throughout the New York City metro area, including New Jersey: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Westchester, Long Island, Jersey City and Hoboken, Bergen County, Newark and Essex County, Monmouth County and New Jersey.