Brooklyn’s sales market is hotter than ever – with the median sales price climbing to a record level in the second quarter and topping pre-recession highs, according to a Douglas Elliman report published Thursday.
In addition to record median prices, the average sales price and the median sales price in the luxury market also reached peak levels, said Jonathan Miller of appraisal firm Miller Samuels, who wrote the report.
During the second quarter, the median sales price in Brooklyn was $575,000. That’s up 4.5 percent from the prior year and 6.5 percent over a previous-high of $540,000, reached in the third quarter of 2007. The average sales price jumped 16.6 percent in the second quarter to $783,296. In the second quarter of 2013, that figure was $671,964.
“Those numbers are record prices for Brooklyn,” Miller said.
In the luxury market, median sales prices cracked $2 million for the first time, according to Miller, with a median sales price of $2.14 million, up 29.6 percent from $1.65 million. The entry-price threshold for the luxury market was $1.5 million, up 23.1 percent from $1.2 million, according to the report.
“Not only is the market rising in general, but the top of the market is rising, as well,” Miller noted.
Overall, the number of sales was up – to 2,086 compared with 1,855 in last year’s second quarter. The increase in sales “has only happened twice in two years,” Miller noted.
In a separate report also released Thursday, Corcoran said competition in Brooklyn had driven prices up, to an average of $734,000 in the second quarter. That’s as 17 percent jump from the second quarter last year.
Half of Brooklyn’s submarkets saw average condo prices of $1,000 per square foot and up. “This quarter there were more closings over $2,000,000 than any other prior quarter,” Frank Percesepe, Corcoran’s senior regional vice president, wrote in the report.
The Elliman report, which also included Queens, found the number of sales in Queens slipped 3.6 percent to 2,404, ending six straight quarters of sales increases. Median sales prices fell 9 percent to $355,000. The median price in the luxury market increased 1.1 percent to $990,000.
Listing inventory fell 5.3 percent in the borough to 5,892 units, while the number of days a property spent on the market dropped 3.5 percent to 110 days.
Yuval Greenblatt, an executive vice president at Elliman, said the Queens market showed signs of stabilization. But he said Long Island City is constrained by limited supply. “There were a couple of new condos in the market in the last 12 months to 18 months that were absorbed quickly,” he said of Long Island City.
