Brooklyn sees 60 percent jump in million-dollar home sales

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.

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“The early part of the new year was one of the strongest because there were not a lot of townhouses available,” said Chris Thomas, executive vice president at Brown Harris Stevens. “The ones that were available tended to have a number of bidders, which drove prices up.”

Most of the $1 million-plus sales took place in Williamsburg, with Park Slope coming in second.

Property Shark’s data aligned with previous reports by the Corocran Group, Prudential Douglas Elliman and MNS, all of which suggested that the Brooklyn Market was being significantly buoyed by new development. [Crain’s]