The hot Brooklyn residential market abruptly slammed on the brakes last month, with both the dollar volume and number of sales declining sharply, new data from PropertyShark shows.
The total dollar volume of residential cooperative, condominium and one- and two-family sales recorded in Brooklyn last month fell to $242.7 million, which represented a 33 percent decline from the $364 million recorded in February of 2013. The number of sales dropped to 362, a 44 percent slide compared to the same period a year ago, when there were 647 sales.
Indeed, the number of sales in February marked the fewest monthly transactions in at least four years, as far back as the PropertyShark data was available. The next lowest number of monthly sales was in June 2013, when there were 458 sales. The next lowest month in terms of dollar volume was February 2012, when buyers shelled out just $248 million in sales.
Last year ended with a rush of closings in the borough including in trendy neighborhoods like Williamsburg, and that activity continued into January. So why the dramatic drop-off in February?
Some real estate insiders attributed the plunge in sales to a lack of inventory.
“I think there is a supply and demand factor. There are not too many homes up for sale,” said Laura Lombardo, an agent with Neuhaus Realty, a residential brokerage based in Staten Island that has 141 brokers and agents.
“I think things will come up in pricing because there is no inventory. That is my prediction overall,” Lombardo said.
Others said they were having their best quarter ever.
“We had a record-breaking first quarter,” Karen Heyman, an agent at Sotheby’s International Realty, said.
Lombardo was the listing agent (and also represented the buyer as well, she told The Real Deal) in the most expensive residential sale recorded in Brooklyn last month. The 5,240-square-foot home at 8381 Shore Road in Bay Ridge sold for $3.58 million in a transaction that closed on January 28, city records show.
The second-most expensive home sale was for 169 Adelphi Street in Fort Greene, a four-bedroom townhouse that sold on February 14 for $3.5 million. The listing agent was Karen and Alan Heyman of Sotheby’s International Realty.
Next was the $3.35 million sale of 301 State Street, a 4,200-square-foot townhouse constructed by Time Equities and Hamlin Ventures in Beorum Hill, that closed on January 17. The Corcoran Group’s Corcoran Group’s James Cornell and Leslie Marshall were the listing agents on the sale. Alan Louie of Citi Habitats was the buying agent, information from StreetEasy shows.
The fourth-most-expensive home sale was 289 Cumberland Street in Fort Greene for $2.675 million on February 10. That six-bedroom, 2,310-square-foot townhouse was listed by Tom Stuart of Bond New York.
Rounding out the top five was the $2.55 million sale of the condo unit 3A at the ClockTower building at 1 Main Street in Dumbo, which closed on January 8. The two-bedroom, 2,198-square-foot condo unit was listed by Vicki Negron of Corcoran Group, and was on the market for 42 days before it sold for $50,000 over the asking price, StreetEasy data reported.