A Boom in Brooklyn Housing?
A CityRealty report explores residential development in Brooklyn.
By Keith Loria, Contributing Editor
New York—CityRealty has released its Brooklyn New Development Report, which contains data, analysis and graphics exploring the unprecedented boom in residential development in Brooklyn over the next five years and beyond.
“With increasingly high demand for homes in new developments in Brooklyn, we’re expecting to see the Brooklyn skyline transform in the next five years,” Gabby Warshawer, CityRealty’s director of research and communications, told MHN. “Our research shows that new development will double from this year to next, and that it will reach a 10-year high in 2016 and then surpass that record again in 2017.”
According to the report, Brooklyn’s skyline will be transformed with roughly 22,000 new apartments added to the borough, dramatically changing the built environment.
“One of our most interesting findings was that nearly 50 percent of the new units planned in Brooklyn are located in only two neighborhoods, Downtown Brooklyn and Williamsburg,” Warshawer said. “For the most part, this is due to rezoning in those areas in 2004 and 2005 which has allowed residential development to take off, outstripping levels of construction seen before the financial crisis.”
The pace of building is expected to reach 10-year highs in the next two years, with nearly 5,000 new apartments in 2016 and another 6,000 in 2017.
According to Warshawer, CityRealty is forecasting a dramatic change to the size of buildings in Brooklyn in the years ahead, as well.
“While the borough has historically been known for single-family or small multifamily homes like brownstones, our research shows that there is a boom in construction of buildings with over 20 units, many of which will be 10 or more stories,” he said. “In addition to the many new developments in popular areas like Downtown Brooklyn and Williamsburg, we’re seeing a few very large-scale developments in neighborhoods like Greenpoint that are often thought of as off the beaten path, which will result in thousands of new apartments.”
