Both household incomes and home values went down on Long Island in 2010. Median home value decreased a little more than median household income, resulting in a slightly smaller ratio of home value to household income. Compared to the peak at 5.9 in 2006, the ratio had dropped by 15% to just below 5. But it is still much higher than the level in 2000 and almost doubles what financial experts believe is reasonable (2.5).

What’s getting built?
The number of building permits issued on Long Island reached an all-time low for the last three decades in 2009, and experienced only a slight increase in 2010. The 1,500 permits issued in 2010 is no more than one-fourth of what it was in 2005 and one eighth of what it was in 1986. Long Island also issues far fewer building permits – especially multi-family permits – than other NY suburbs. On average over the last ten years, only 16 building permits a year were issued per 1000 residents and only 3 of them were for multifamily buildings, compared with more than 26 in other New York suburbs and 10 for multifamily units. The share of multifamily permits in the other New York suburbs has reached the highest in the past three decades at about 45% while on Long Island it has been going down since a surge in 2008 and now is 12%. Many of the problems associated with housing on Long Island—including its high cost and lack of rental units—can be traced to low rates of housing production, and particularly low rates of multi-family unit production.