Brooklyn and Queens closed out 2021 with all-time sale price records

Median home sale price in Q4 rose by 7.5% YOY in both boroughs

(iStock/Illustration by Steven Dilakian for The Real Deal)
(iStock/Illustration by Steven Dilakian for The Real Deal)

The sales markets in Brooklyn and Queens are at it again.

Brooklyn set new home price records in the fourth quarter for the sixth time in the past seven quarters, according to a report by appraisal firm Miller Samuel for Douglas Elliman. Queens set new records for the third straight quarter year-to-date.

Brooklyn’s median sale price was $941,000 in the fourth quarter, a 7.5 percent increase from last year. The average sale price of $1.2 million was the second highest on record since tracking began in 2003.

The median sale price for a home in Queens was $718,000 in the fourth quarter, which was also a 7.5 percent uptick from a year ago.

The price jumps are largely because Brooklyn and Queens behaved similarly to the suburbs, which benefited from those who fled Manhattan earlier in the pandemic, said Jonathan Miller, who authored the report.

“These markets did not see the extreme volatility that Manhattan did,” Miller added.

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Despite rising prices, Brooklyn’s supply did not decline, but remained at low levels. Supply increased by a modest 5.2 percent year-over-year but was down 5.8 percent from two years ago.

“The reason why Brooklyn isn’t seeing the significant declines that the other boroughs are seeing is that the streaks of record prices seem to be more impactful to pull property owners into the market,” Miller said.

Queens, on the other hand, had its supply take a dive. Sales activity rose 18.7 percent to 3,773, while the number of available homes fell 18.5 percent year-over-year.

Such a combination boosted sales to the fastest-paced market in more than three years: The months of supply in Queens was 3.9 months in the fourth quarter, which was 31 percent faster year-over-year and 17 faster than two years ago.

With 3,217 sales, activity in Brooklyn was up 19 percent in the fourth quarter year-over-year and up 26 percent from December 2019. The market is 10.3 percent faster than it was last year and 25.7 percent faster than it was in the fourth quarter of 2019.