Bicycles help brokers market remote areas

The popularity of cycling has helped drive up prices in neighborhoods that are underserved by public transit

Brooklyn cyclists
Brooklyn cyclists

WEEKENDEDITION As rents rise and New Yorkers are pushed deeper into out-of-the-way neighborhoods, bicycles and bicycle lanes are becoming an important part of the real estate game.

Since 2007, the city has added more than 350 miles of bike lanes across the five boroughs, according to Department of Transportation data cited by the New York Times. And all those lanes mean that proximity to a subway stop is becoming less important to renters.

Brooklyn neighborhoods like Red Hook, Greenpoint and parts of Bushwick have seen their popularity — and rents – grow tremendously over the years, and improvements to cycling conditions in those areas have, to at least some degree, facilitated that rise to prominence.

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“Your housing options change when you buy a bike and use it,” Lyon Porter, a sales and leasing director of Town Residential, who relied on his fixed-gear Dutch cruiser when living in Williamsburg, told the Times. “People get so much more for their money in this tight, compressed market,” when freed from the need to be near a train line, he said. “Your definable boundaries are different on a bike.”

In fact, of the 27,759 New Yorkers who said they biked to work in a 2008-2012 survey, nearly half lived in Brooklyn, especially in neighborhoods like Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Carroll Gardens, Red Hook, Northern Crown Heights, Prospect Heights and Bushwick.

And brokers and real estate tech firms are catching on. In order to better market remote neighborhoods companies, including StreetEasy.com, AptsandLofts.com and Halstead Property, have incorporated the location Citi Bike stations into their listings. [NYT]Christopher Cameron