There were 223 high-end residential property sales in Brooklyn in the second quarter of 2011, the highest number in three years, according to recent analysis by PropertyShark.com cited by Crain’s. High-end sales are defined as those over $1 million.
Sales of million-dollar-and-up properties jumped a jaw-dropping 60 percent from the period in 2010 and outpaced the previous record set in the third quarter of 2008. Condo purchases accounted for 123 of the deals, more than double the tally in the same quarter of 2010, Crain’s said. Around 25 percent of the sales were in new developments.
The surge in sales does not necessarily indicate that Brooklyn’s residential market is thriving, experts said, as a lot of the logged sales actually went into contract earlier in the 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]