They're building, but will tenants come?

With landlords struggling to find tenants for homes built in Riverdale’s housing boom of several years ago, many residents are wondering why developers want to build even more tall apartment buildings in the northwest Bronx.

Projects discussed at a summer meeting of Community Board (CB) 8’s Land Use Committee would bring a total of 184 new apartments to the neighborhood — 48 units at Simone Development Companies’ lots around 3735 Riverdale Ave., 15 at developer Abraham Strulovitch’s 640 W. 238th St. project and 121 at the Stagg Group’s 3469 Cannon Place high-rise. That’s on top of 86 apartments currently under construction at Selfhelp’s 6469 Broadway apartment building and additional units at Stagg Group’s 6155 Broadway project. Moreover, after several consecutive quarters of modest growth, there was a -13 percent change in home sale prices in Riverdale in the second quarter of this fiscal year in Riverdale, according to the Real Estate Board of New York.

So why the building boom all of a sudden?

With the city expected to overhaul affordable housing rules in the coming months, including a proposed mandate to include affordable units in new developments in parts of the city, builders want to file their plans before the law changes, CB 8 Land Use Committee Chairman Charles Moerdler said.

“This is a repeat of problems that we have had historically where the city of New York sets a deadline to achieve a result and people put in a ton of stuff before that deadline comes so that they can get their benefit,” he said.

While only some of the developers active in the neighborhood are talking affordable housing — that is Stagg’s stock in trade, while Simone says it has no plans for affordable units on Riverdale Avenue — all buildings could be affected by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) proposal, which calls for 25 to 30 percent of new apartments in rezoned neighborhoods to go to low-income households.