Halstead Property

Brooklyn House Sales Reach 5 4 Billion

25 HOUSES SOLD EVERY DAY

Bed-Stuy Has Most Sales, Heights Has Steepest Prices

by Dennis Holt

BROOKLYN — In 2005, Brooklyn realized sales of houses at the hard-to-believe number of $5.4 billion — meaning that 25 houses were sold every day. The sales of 9,252 one- to four-family houses generated this dollar amount, clearly a record. These sales came to an average of $591,437 per house. One way to look at this astonishing total is that $14.7 million exchanged hands every 24 hours. The $5.4 billion comes out to more than $2,000 per Brooklyn resident.

The data for these statistics were produced by Halstead Property Company. It is the first time that the volume of house sales in Brooklyn were made public on a yearly basis.

In a separate report, the Corcoran Group released a report on sales of condos and co-ops in the brownstone neighborhoods plus Williamsburg and Bed-Stuy. No total unit sales were recorded in the report, but very significant trend lines were indicated.

Borough-wide numbers were reported. “The average price for a co-op apartment in the borough increased significantly by 16 percent from $417,000 to $485,000.

“The average price for condos in Brooklyn was up a sturdy 10 percent from $586,000 to $647,000.” Note that the average condo sale was higher than the average house sale. The major reason for this is that condos and co-ops tend to be concentrated in the brownstone neighborhoods, where prices are quite high.

The editors of the Corcoran report summed up the dynamic of the real estate boom in Brooklyn: “The borough solidified its emergence as New York City’s premier locale for young urban professionals and families seeking luxurious yet affordable property, particularly new development.”

This is a powerful sentence, especially with the last phrase “new development.” The condo and co-op burst in the Downtown Brooklyn area will produce many impacts, most of which are hard to predict. In the future, sales of newly produced housing units will have to be tracked by someone.

One- to four-unit house sales in Brooklyn took place last year everywhere. The only real community not covered by the Halstead report was DUMBO, because that area and Vinegar Hill hardly have any houses to sell.

Bed-Stuy, East New York

The community which led the housing sales volume was Bed-Stuy, with $522.6 million. That neighborhood saw 1,012 houses change hands. East New York saw the most house sales with 1,164; it had a volume sales of $493.5 million. These two neighborhoods, which both have very low median household incomes, produced over $1 billion in house sales last year.

Other communities in Brooklyn that led the sales parade were, in order, Sheepshead Bay, Canarsie, Midwood, Gravesend and Bushwick.

Million-Dollar Club

Total sales volumes for the brownstone neighborhoods is not as impressive as total sales for the other neighborhoods, but the average sales prices are. Leading the pack is Brooklyn Heights with $2.7 million per house.

It is followed by Cobble Hill ($1.9 million), Park Slope ($1.3 million), Carroll Gardens ($1.27 million), Boerum Hill ($1.25 million), Prospect Heights ($1.1 million), Clinton Hill ($1.075 million) and Fort Greene ($1.072 million).

Manhattan Beach, with 30 houses turning over, also was in the “million-dollar” club with $1.14 million. With all the talk of a housing decline, second-half Brooklyn house sales came to $3 billion, compared to $2.4 billion for the first half.

The Warnings Are There

But the warnings are there. Syndicated columnist Dan Dorfman reported last week that “American households have far more money invested in real estate than they ever had in speculative stocks. Their debt payments, at 13.75 percent of their disposable income, are also the highest ever.” The editors of Safe Money report warn that “the current housing bubble as potentially more dangerous than any financial bubble in history.”

Thursday, March 23, 2006