# What’s Manhattan worth?

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://paragraph.com/@brandondonnelly), 2018-05-01

fred-smith, jason-barr, land, land-values, manhattan, new-york, new-york-city, real-estate, real-estate-values, richard-florida, rutgers-university, sayali-kulkami, uncategorized

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I like looking at real estate values over longer periods of time because it helps to put things into perspective. 

Below is a land value index for Manhattan running from 1950 to 2014 that was recently [created by economists](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166046217300820) out of Rutgers University.

![image](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/cd6e9e36ac54a5becb9a20d542705de1.png)

The study was also cited in [this recent article](https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/04/what-manhattans-land-is-worth/558776/) by Richard Florida.

Here are some of the highlights from [their study](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166046217300820):

> _We find three major cycles with land values reaching their nadir in 1977, just after the city’s fiscal crisis._
> 
> _Since 1993, land prices have risen much faster than population or employment, at an average annual rate of 15.8%._
> 
> _We estimate the entire amount of developable land on Manhattan in 2014 was worth approximately $1.74 trillion._
> 
> _We estimate the long run return to Manhattan land values \[since the island was first inhabited by Dutch settlers in 1626\] to be about 6.4%._

What’s fascinating to me is the accelerated appreciation. The index starts at 100 in 1950, ends up slightly above that by 1993, and then simply takes off.

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://paragraph.com/@brandondonnelly/whats-manhattan-worth)*