The recession is hurting some neighborhoods in the city more than
others. In Downtown Brooklyn, about 20 of 100 shops on Flatbush
Avenue are vacant, said Faith Hope Consolo, chairman of the
retail leasing and sales division at Prudential Douglas Elliman. And
retail rents on Fulton Street have fallen by a third from their high of
$150 per square foot in 2007, brokers said. In the Forest Hills
neighborhood of Queens, asking rents for storefronts on Austin Street
have fallen to $70 per square foot, less than half of the peak of $150
per square foot in 2007. In Hunts Point in the Bronx, asking rents for
industrial spaces fell just 10 to 15 percent to around $10 per square
foot.

They may be pricey but the Upper East Side and Upper
West Side are still the most popular places for home buyers to check
out, according to a Post analysis of data from the Real Estate Board of New
York’s Web site. Since Jan. 1, user searches on ResidentialNYC.com show that
the next three most popular areas are the West
Village, Harlem
and Lincoln Square.
Brooklyn’s most popular were Park Slope, Bay Ridge, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Sheepshead Bay
and Prospect Heights. In Queens, the top five were Forest
Hills, Jackson Heights,
Rego Park,
Astoria and
Douglaston/Little Neck. The most popular in the Bronx
were Spuyten Duyvil, Throgs Neck, Riverdale, Parkchester and Jerome Park. Staten
Island’s most popular neighborhoods were Tottenville, Great Kills, Rossville, Arden Heights
and Mariners Park.