232 Court Street

Ideal Properties Group, the residential rental and commercial leasing
brokerage focusing on brownstone Brooklyn, has opened its third office
in the borough at 232 Court Street near Baltic Street in Cobble Hill.
The new office, a 2,200-square-foot ground-floor space in a landmarked
building, is Ideal’s third in its three-year run. Other locations are
in Park Slope and Gowanus. “We have felt that despite having an active
presence in the charming neighborhoods of Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill,
Carroll Gardens, and Brooklyn Heights…. we were still underserving
the area,” said Erik Serras, CEO of Ideal. The office will debut with
20 brokers and sales agents, the company said. TRD

[more]

Brooklyn and Queens have seen sharp spikes in residential sales activity since last year, along with a growing momentum in the high-end market, according to a quarterly market report released today by Prudential Douglas Elliman. But Brooklyn appears to be recovering faster than Queens, which has been devastated by high foreclosure rates. “They’ve both doing better than they were a year ago,” said appraiser Jonathan Miller, the president and CEO of Miller Samuel and the preparer of the report. But “Queens is trailing Brooklyn,” he said. The number of sales in Brooklyn jumped 56.9 percent to 1,861 sales in the first quarter of 2010, from 1,186 in the same period of 2009, the report shows. In Queens, there were 3,113 sales, 72.8 percent more than the prior-year quarter. Eric Benaim, CEO of Long Island City-based brokerage Modern Spaces, said he’s noticed a significant uptick in activity in the borough since last year. [more]

The decline of sales prices in Brooklyn and Queens accelerated in the
second quarter of 2009, with both boroughs showing double-digit annual
price drops, according to quarterly market reports released today by
Prudential Douglas Elliman. In Brooklyn, the median sales price
slipped 16 percent to $441,090 in the second quarter, from $525,000 in
the same period of 2008. Queens, meanwhile, saw a 13.8 percent decline
in median sales price, to $362,000 in the first quarter from $420,000
in the second quarter of 2008. For both boroughs, that’s a more
dramatic increase in median price drops than first-quarter 2009, when
Brooklyn saw a 10 percent decline in median sales prices compared to
first-quarter 2008, and the Queens median price fell 5 percent. [more]