Williamsburg’s Warehouse 11 (credit: PropertyShark)

Brooklyn apartments that their developers sold in fire sales during the housing crisis are now bringing top dollar, the New York Post reported. [more]

Brownstones in Greenpoint

Brooklyn and Queens are both suffering from a squeaky tight inventory of homes, although only Brooklyn is seeing the fallout – plummeting sales and skyrocketing prices, according to market reports released today by leading brokerages.

The plummet in Brooklyn sales coincides with the largest year-over-year inventory decline on record, Douglas Elliman’s first-quarter sales report shows. Queens suffered its biggest supply drop since 2005. [more]

Average vacancy rate in January (Image courtesy: Citi Habitats)

Manhattan tenants found a welcome respite from ballooning rents in January, as more home hunters were pulled into the sales market, according to a monthly rental market report released today by Douglas Elliman. The average monthly rent for a Manhattan apartment was $3,794 in January, a 4.5 percent decrease over December, the report shows. [more]

New York City

Sales inventory in new development projects across Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens was down year-over-year in October, Crain’s reported, citing a Streeteasy.com report. But the number of these listings in Manhattan is on the upswing — rising more than 10 percent in the pat six months — even as they continue to fall in Queens and Brooklyn.

The inventory declines have increased prices, however. Broken down by borough, Brooklyn saw a 52.7 percent year-over-year fall in inventory to 276 from 583 a year earlier. In Queens the number declined 52.6 percent year-over-year to 108 from 228. [more]

Gowanus Canal

Even though city, state and federal clean-up work has begun on the Gowanus Canal, a group of Gowanus residents has decided to take matters into their own hands. These residents run a variety of tasks, including fly-over photography of the canal to create maps for analyzing street run-offs during rain storms, composting and replanting gardens that have been damaged in part by oil from the neighborhood’s industrial sites, the New York Times reported. [more]

Distressed commercial properties that have fallen into the foreclosure process in Brooklyn reach the auction stage at just about a third of the rate of those in Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx, data from real estate firm PropertyShark.com shows.

The lower rate of commercial properties being sold at auction indicates what many real estate insiders in Brooklyn say — that the foreclosure process is much longer in the borough. [more]

From left: Mayor Bloomberg and Silent Barn, a loft-performance space that was shut down earlier this yearSince the days Rudolph Giuliani reined as mayor of New York City, the police, fire and building departments have cracked down on lofts that double as living and performance space.

Though it has discouraged some, the Village Voice reported that the practice, which dates back to the 1930s, is still widespread.

The crackdown, dubbed Multi-Agency Response to Community Hotspots (MARCH), was initiated by the Giuliani administration after the Happy Land fire in 1990, and it gained steam through the Bloomberg administration, which has increased MARCH activity by 35 percent. … [more]

Median home sales prices in Brooklyn rose 5 percent in the third quarter of 2011, according to Prudential Douglas Elliman’s Brooklyn quarterly survey of sales, as The Real Deal previously reported. BrickUnderground.com has some theories as to why the borough saw price increases in a relatively bleak quarter that saw flat prices in Manhattan. Aside from the obvious — affordability, driven in some measure at least by condominiums built with tax abatements — the factors behind Brooklyn’s sales numbers, BrickUnderground said, include less-crowded elite schools, vibrant small businesses and, of course, the best views of Manhattan you can get without living in Hoboken…. [more]

Source: MNS

This month marks the three-year anniversary of the Lehman Brother’s collapse, September monthly rental reports for Manhattan and Brooklyn, released today by MNS, note. Rents in neighborhoods such as Tribeca, Soho and Greenwich Village have fared best during the recovery, mostly maintaining their values, the report shows, increasing by around 13 percent from 2008.

As for month-over-month increases, the report indicates a small degree of positive growth.

“As predicted, this September brought nominal growth in average rental prices compared to August, but the rental market in both Manhattan and Brooklyn continues to be strong,” said Andrew Barrocas, CEO of MNS.

Rents increased 1.3 percent for Manhattan one-bedrooms on a month-over-month basis, 1.6 percent for two-bedrooms, but decreased by 2.7 percent for studios. Prices are up in Manhattan 0.8 percent overall compared to August, with 0.2 percent in non-doorman units and a slight decrease of 0.04 percent in doorman properties. – Katherine Clarke… [more]

Eighty-nine-year-old Brooklynite Mildred Fuyira stands to make a 11,744 percent profit from the sale of her currently listed Boerum Hill brownstone, the Post reported. She and her family paid $16,000 for the 19th century townhouse at 299 State Street, between Smith and Hoyt streets, in 1967. That same property is now asking $1.895 million.

The neighborhood has changed a lot in the 44 years Fuyira has lived there, she said. When she and her husband first moved in, the block was home to drifters and prostitutes. Now it’s full of upscale families and young professionals with children…. [more]