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Hot Real Estate Market Could be Cooling as People Return to Work in Manhattan
By Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — There are signs of hope for Manhattan businesses that are reeling from the effects of the pandemic.
Office occupancies have not returned to pre-pandemic levels, yet, but heavy traffic is an indication people are returning to work in the big city. Jonathan Miller, president and CEO of Miller Samuel, Inc., believes the market should balance itself out.
He told Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso on the WCBS Small Business Spotlight, sponsored by Dime Community Bank, that we’ve reached “peak Zoom.”
“The outer boroughs really didn’t see the discounting or the correction in prices that Manhattan did,” said Miller, adding the so-called “exodus” was among wealthy New Yorkers and those able to work remotely during the pandemic. “Those discounts, I think, are really being compressed.”
Since the COVID shutdowns were lifted, some new businesses have taken advantage of lower rents in Manhattan and are eagerly awaiting people to return to the office.
“You have to remember that because 80 percent of the office towers are essentially empty, they’re waiting for that call back,” he said. “That call back really is going to take through at least early part of next year before we see critical mass assuming another variant doesn’t come into the picture.”
Miller believes the summer Delta variant surge pushed the city’s recovery back. He’s now seeing early signs of the housing market leveling off in the suburbs. The appraiser said home prices are plateauing, but not declining, as many employees continue to work remotely.
“When you think about not coming back in or delaying, and then, you look at markets like the Hamptons or the Hudson Valley where there’s been a tremendous amount of real estate activity, that activity has been fueled by low mortgage rates and remote work,” Miller said.
He believes the city’s residential market will see a youth renaissance. People like his youngest son have returned to Manhattan for career opportunities.
Homes across Connecticut’s Fairfield County and the Long Island suburbs sold above asking price in the second quarter of 2021, according to Miller Samuel.
“That’s a proxy for bidding wars,” said Miller.
Rather than look for a bargain, he advises homebuyers to look for places where home values will be sustained because remote and hybrid work is here to stay in some capacity.
“Everything has changed,” he said.
See how the volatile real estate market impacts businesses on the Small Business Spotlight video above.
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Small Business Comeback Tour: Little City Books
By Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso
HOBOKEN, NEW JERSEY – This traditional bookstore in Hoboken is thriving.
Joe Connolly talked to Donna Garban, co-owner of Little City Books, on this installment of the WCBS Small Business Comeback Tour, sponsored by PSE&G.
Little City Books is coming off a superb Halloween weekend for book sales. Garban said some reading habits have changed during the COVID-19 pandemic with more interest in current events and politics.
“Because we’re a music town, historically, we have a really good music section,” she said. “There’s a new book out that we just got called ‘Renegades’ and it’s the conversation between Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen. Being a Jersey store, that’s selling really well.”
Their most popular genre continues to be literary fiction.
On the video above, Garban also explains how some pandemic changes such as the popularity of outdoor dining have helped usher in foot traffic to Little City Books.
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New York Could be Transitioning from a Pandemic to an Endemic
By Neil A. Carousso
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Epidemiologists are optimistic that COVID-19 will eventually become a seasonal threat like the flu. They credit high vaccination rates in New York for helping transition the state and most populous city to an endemic from the highly deadly pandemic that overwhelmed New York hospitals in the spring of 2020.
On The 880 Weekly Rewind, Dr. Mangala Narasimhan, critical care pulmonologist and director of critical care services at Northwell Health, told WCBS producer Neil A. Carousso that she is concerned about the potential for a twindemic this winter.
“I don’t think it’s time to completely get rid of masking; I don’t think its time to completely get rid of social distancing,” Dr. Narasimhan said of living with COVID-19.
Rewind Host Lynda Lopez also takes a deep dive into next week’s local elections, including the New York City mayoral race, New Jersey gubernatorial race and the Virginia gubernatorial race that could be a referendum on President Joe Biden’s first year in office.
Subscribe and download The 880 Weekly Rewind podcast for in-depth reporting and deeper analysis of the top stories of the week, produced by Neil A. Carousso, for WCBS-AM New York.
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Back to Office Exposes Digital Divide between Employers and Employees
By Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso
CONNECTICUT (WCBS 880) — At about 7:30 a.m. on a weekday morning in October, David Lewis is driving to OperationsInc headquarters in Norwalk, CT. He can spot plenty of good parking spaces available at the New Canaan train station.
“You could have found a parking spot up against the train station tracks, themselves, which were coveted spaces that used to fill at 5/5:30 in the morning. That tells me all I need to know about how people still are working remotely and are not making their way into the city,” said Lewis on the WCBS Small Business Spotlight, sponsored by Dime Community Bank.
That’s concerning to the human resources CEO who feels the same way as many of his larger clients: They want workers back in the office.
“I’m ecstatic about the ability to dynamically talk to my employees, bring somebody into a meeting, and have a quick conversation with them about an issue that just came up,” Lewis told Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso. “I keep hearing that from our clients that ‘I want to go back to the way that we did it before because that worked best for us.'”
He recognizes, though, that remote work has increased productivity in many areas. One glaring outlier is employee training.
“Training for us was always about the in-person experience – about coming into a training facility, a training room, or a hotel conference center – and being able to get in front of our students and really connect with them – have a discussion versus have a lecture. That’s our secret sauce. But, we’ve had to pivot that since last year to something online,” said Lewis.
To combat so-called “Zoom fatigue,” OperationsInc has made its online training modules shorter. Lewis also admits the world has changed.
“Employees are in control and employers need to understand that,” he said.
Many workers want the flexibility that remote work allows, namely flexible work hours, absence of a commute, and the ability to pick up their kids from school.
Lewis tells his clients to find the right balance or turnover will be extremely high.
Labor issues continue to plague businesses and many prospective employees complain that their online application does not get noticed by a human resources professional.
Lewis told Connolly and Carousso that artificial intelligence has exacerbated a huge problem during the pandemic .
“A lot of companies have invested a lot of money in these applicant tracking systems but don’t know enough about how to change these filtration settings to get the candidates that they’re looking for through the door,” he said.
“They also tend to eliminate a lot of people because they’re not remembering that the settings they have – five years of this or two years of that – have to be regularly adjusted.”Lewis told WCBS 880 another hiring issue at play is that in-person jobs are not as desirable as remote work in the current labor market.
Watch the WCBS Small Business Spotlight video above for more on this story.
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Why Inoculating Kids is the Key to Driving Down U.S. COVID-19 Infections
Produced by Neil A. Carousso
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine could be approved for children as soon as next week after the company’s data showed its kid-sized dose is nearly 91 percent effective in preventing symptomatic infections.
On this week’s 880 Weekly Rewind, Lynda Lopez covers the latest developments in the pandemic fight and looks at ways to improve healthcare in communities of color.
Subscribe to The 880 Weekly Rewind podcast for in-depth reporting and deeper analysis of the top stories of the week, produced by Neil A. Carousso, for WCBS-AM New York.
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