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Sunlight is an important factor to many New Yorkers who are in the market for a new home. In fact, homebuyers consistently use the sunlight search filter on the Localize website to search for new property.
According to Localize’s recent Market Report, 71% of searchers were looking for access to natural light. To help buyers make more informed decisions, Localize continues to evolve its sunlight tool to not only show how sunlight affects a home today, but also how new development will affect that same property in the future.
To help better understand how sunlight impacts homes in the city, Localize recently took a look at new development in NYC and found that a number of new buildings are being built and planned for in the coming months. While these buildings bring new opportunities for homebuyers, they will also impact existing residents who may lose sunlight and access to city views.
The data revealed some interesting findings: Brooklyn was revealed as the borough with the most new development in the works, with 173 approved permits. Brooklyn was also the borough with the highest number of buildings that will lose sunlight once these new projects are completed, at 1,821 buildings experiencing sunlight loss. These Brooklyn-based buildings are set to lose a total of 4,452 hours of sunlight.
Localize has been analyzing and providing sunlight data to buyers for several years, offering a viewpoint into the way the construction of the city impacts homes on a street and building level. By using LiDAR airborne sensors and available data on city structures, Localize is able to generate shadow maps and create three-dimensional models of each building across NYC. These maps help calculate how much sunlight is blocked from surrounding buildings and allow Localize to calculate the arc of horizon of each outward-facing facade in the city. This analysis results in the total amount of direct sunlight exposure that exists for various points on a map of the boroughs.
When a buyer then visits the Localize site and searches for the address of a building, the search results will describe the sunlight on each side of the building and how those sunlight totals change throughout the year. Additional insights on Localize’s sunlight analysis and data can be found here.
As the city changes, so does Localize’s sunlight data. Localize continues to tap into both proprietary and public data, including future construction projects and tree growth rates, to help show how a home’s access to sunlight will be today and into the future.
Stay tuned for new information on sunlight data, including additional levels of detail that will be available to buyers on the Localize site in the near future.
