Courtesy Scott Varley
By Scott Varley
Yes, we as Saratogians are as diverse in our opinions about the growth in Saratoga as there are places to eat and drink throughout our fair city. You’ll hear comments stating that every square inch of downtown is being built on, usually with some sort of mildly unpleasant undertone as if property owners have some nerve allowing the free market to express itself through the demand and popularity of prime Saratoga Springs real estate.
I’m in real estate and I’m extremely proud of what has been built here in the last 30 years. Having been born and raised here I remember the downtown of the 1970s. Shopping for clothes with my mom and sister, Boy Scout uniforms from Starbucs department store (later Lillian’s restaurant and not to be confused with Starbucks coffee), the Community Theatre for a movie (now Roohan Realty), the House of G Chinese restaurant (on the corner of Broadway and Spring Street), the old library (now the Arts building at Broadway and Spring Street), the lunch counter at Woolworths’ on Broadway (the site where the Gap is).
It was not a very fancy or upscale place and downtown was very quiet except for during the horseracing meet. Things looked kind of run down, but to me it was home and we loved growing up here as kids.
Today, it’s a different place. The high-rise condos (first appearing almost 20 years ago) on Division Street replaced the Saratoga Bowling and filled in the old abandoned railroad property. The first building was slow to sell and most locals felt there was not a market for this type of urban-style living.
It’s a different story today. While there are still a few new high-end condos at 38 High Rock and Park Place on Broadway left for sale from before the real estate crash, you can now see the demand for these downtown maintenance-free style housing units.
New projects underway on Division Street, Phila Street, Excelsior Avenue, Union Avenue and so on, are a sign that we are not over-built and that the market is demanding these types of products for housing. These are all selling and for some record-setting prices.
Sometimes I’m asked if Saratoga is being over-built? For those that would like a quieter Saratoga, such as what I grew up with in the 1970s, I feel that the magic that got our city to be the playground of the rich and famous at the turn of the century is back. And looking at the historic pictures of Broadway, you can see that the downtown was more populated and much denser than it is today with some buildings that towered over 100 feet, compared with the height restriction today of only 70 feet.
What a time it must have been like to live in Saratoga in the early 1900s, I wondered as a child. Today, I have to wonder no more, as perhaps we have returned to a similar density and enthusiasm for the downtown area.
As for apartments, the demand for housing in Saratoga Springs is the highest of any area in the Capital District. People want to live here and walk to downtown if they can.
We have a much higher need for temporary housing, due to industries like GlobalFoundries that employ people on a contract basis.
The housing recession of almost 10 years ago also put a number of people into a position where they will never own their own real estate again, in spite of conventional wisdom. Since housing downtown is so expensive and generally hard to get, the attraction of renting something newer with no work or maintenance is very attractive and I believe will remain so for decades.
Yes, they are very expensive. But the cost of the land and the cost of building a new structure with today’s building codes makes it expensive. However, the demand remains strong and will remain strong. It should be noted that the affordability factor to purchase a home is still at record lows. In spite of that, people still continue to rent in great numbers.
The single-family home market has surged to levels that are similar to the pre-housing bubble. In speaking with someone whom I respect in Saratoga Springs real estate and who owns multiple properties in the city, they said that all you have to do is look into the future, say 20 years from now. What will Saratoga look like then?
The city 20 years ago and the city today are not the same. Twenty years ahead I imagine you’ll see people buying older properties in good locations, paying large sums of money, only to have them taken down and replaced by something much more substantial.
If you look closely, you’ll still see some holes in our commercially zoned areas, and those will most likely be filled in. Those that are low-rise buildings will be replaced by high-rise buildings. Will we see micro-dwellings such as those that exist in larger urban markets today? Apartments that are under 600 square feet?
I went back to 2002 and in that year, three properties sold in the city for over $1 million. In 2016, there were 19 properties that sold in that range, according to our local Multiple Listing Service. Just imagine what the number will be 15 to 20 years from today. I tell people when they say they own real estate in Saratoga that they shouldn’t ever sell it. Because if they do, they’ll never be able to get back in.
So whether we love or hate what’s happening in our city with real estate, the fact remains that it will continue to grow and that will only attract more people to move here that discover this gem of a city in upstate New York.
Varley is a licensed real estate associate broker with Keller Williams in Saratoga Springs.