Brooklyn Residential Prices Continue to Climb

Aleksandra Scepanovic, managing director of Ideal Properties Group

With demand still outpacing supply in the New York City housing market, residential sales prices are still on the rise in the five boroughs. For Brooklyn in particular, its Brownstone Brooklyn and North Brooklyn neighborhoods saw a 2.3 percent increase in sales prices in the second quarter of 2016, according to Ideal Properties Group latest market report.

While the second-quarter increase is 4.5 percent lower than the increase in prices in the first quarter, it still signals that 2016 prices are continuing to outperform 2015 numbers.

“The moment the weather in Brooklyn breaks, and the long grayish days are behind us, we tend to see an uptick in activity. Increased buyer chatter tends to of course increase interest in available inventory—and with that, the seller market tends to receive a boost,”Aleksandra Scepanovic, managing director of Ideal Properties Group, told MHN. “The reinforcement may be short-lived, but given the popularity of Brownstone and North Brooklyn, we are unlikely to see any dramatic downward corrections.”

The quarterly report, titled Brownstone Brooklyn and Beyond, analyzed the borough’s most popular neighborhoods, including those in the “North” section (Williamsburg, the Navy Yard and Greenpoint) and the “Northwest” section (known as Brownstone Brooklyn and encompassing Boerum Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Carroll Gardens, Clinton Hill, Cobble Hill, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Windsor Terrace, the Columbia Waterfront District, and parts of Downtown, DUMBO, Fort Greene, Gowanus, Red Hook and Vinegar Hill).

In these markets, properties sold for an average of $1.36 million and average prices per square foot jumped 9 percent to $1,099 since the second quarter of 2015. Median prices per square foot also rose 12 percent, from $975 to $1,108 per square foot, the report noted.

In terms of property types, “…Townhouses, the apple of Brooklyn’s eye, continue to be the strongest performing asset class and with demand surpassing supply, we predict record-breaking sales in the coming months,” Scepanovic said in the report.

“The very nature of this asset class makes the demand for it always disproportionate to the supply.” she explained. “Brooklyn’s brownstones date back a few centuries and are unlikely to ever be re-created by the modern-day developer…Very little real estate product can match the eclectic combinations offered by an original wood burning fireplace, clad in marble—or a pier mirror, a trellis, a stately set of pocket doors. They tend to form marvelous backdrops for present-day living steeped in history.”

Townhouse sale prices averaged a hefty $2.67 million in the second quarter, which is a 16.1 percent jump from the previous year but a 2.9 percent decrease from the previous quarter. Median prices had a slight increase of .1 percent from the same time period in 2015 to $2.35 million, which is a 6 percent decrease from the first quarter of 2016.

Condominium and co-operative units also saw price increases. Condos sold for more than $1 million for the ninth consecutive quarter, with an average sales price of almost $1.3 million, up 4.2 percent from the previous year, while co-ops sold for $910,666, which is a 19.4 percent increase from the previous year and 6.9 percent higher than the previous quarter.

Despite the high price tags, the demand for these residences are evident as 45 percent of properties sold above list price. The price range of $500,000 to $999,000, represented 36 percent of all sales in the second quarter.

The report analyzed closed sales data from individual co-op and condo units, and one- to three-family townhomes in Brooklyn, and used rolling sales reports from the New York City Department of Finance and the REBNY Listings Service.

For more data findings, see the full report on Ideal Properties Group website.