Waterfront properties with boating rights, 1940s Hollywood-style mansions and expansive manicured lawns usually aren’t the first things that spring to mind when Queens is mentioned. But a few of the 2.2 million New Yorkers who live in the borough know better.
Last month, The Real Deal tallied up last year’s 10 most expensive homes in Queens, which ranged from $1.3 million for a house in Douglaston to the top price of $2.75 million for a house in Flushing.
Queens is a different market than other boroughs, lacking high-rise luxury, but also full of shorefront lots with single-family houses that wouldn’t be out of place in pricier suburbs.
Still, the upper end of the Queens market is way below the entry point of the luxury market in Manhattan. According to appraiser Jonathan Miller, high-end Manhattan properties — the top 10 percent of the market — start at $4 million.
Prices also range higher in Brooklyn, where a two-family Brooklyn Heights townhouse at 212 Columbia Heights sold for a record $8.5 million in 2005.
In Queens, the tony enclave of Douglaston was home to five of the 10 largest sales in the borough. Sitting north and east of the end of the subway lines, the neighborhood rests on the peninsula on Little Neck Bay. It’s a picturesque location, and there’s little surprise that area brokers said waterfront areas fetched consistently high prices.
Residents who work in Manhattan also favor Douglaston, which is only a 27-minute commuter train ride to Penn Station by the Long Island Railroad.
Two sales in Douglaston for $2.6 million tied for second on the top 10 list, and other Douglaston sales for $2.18 million, $1.85 million and $1.3 million ranked sixth, seventh and 10th on the list.
Douglaston is comprised of six distinct neighborhoods, including Doug Bay, Douglas Manor and Douglaston Hill, all located north of Northern Boulevard on the peninsula that sits out on Little Neck Bay. The most exclusive area within Douglaston is the historic district of Douglas Manor.
“The most beautiful block is Shore Road [in Douglas Manor], where all the homes face Little Neck Bay,” said real estate broker Lynne Jaffe, of Doug North Realty. “The architecture varies in the area — from brand-new, square Colonial to a 100-year-old Victorian — and there are homes that were designed by [the influential furniture maker] Gustav Stickley.”
There are currently 19 houses for sale in Douglaston, including a restored Victorian home on a 100-by-250-foot lot for sale just outside of Douglas Manor with an asking price of nearly $2.7 million.
“There was a Greek revival home that sold recently for $2.3 million on Centre Drive [off Shore Road]. Last week we sold another home for $2.6 million,” said Jaffe. “This was a custom-built, modern home with high ceilings and water views. It was actually right outside Douglas Manor, but directly on the water with riparian rights.”
Brokers also cited Malba, an elite area just north of the Long Island Expressway in Whitestone. No property sales cracked the 2006 top 10 list, but a deal early this year on Malba Drive hit $4.2 million, well past the top deal last year.
“Malba is a quiet, secluded and exclusive community surrounded by water with remarkable views of the Whitestone Bridge,” said Anthony Testani, a real estate broker with RE/MAX Millennium. “And Malba Drive is one of the ‘best blocks’ in Queens. It’s beautiful, and the homes are some of the most expensive in the borough.”
There are currently no homes for sale on Malba Drive, which has dozens of large, single-family houses, many with swimming pools, lush gardens, elegant terraces and backyards that slope straight down to the water.
“We closed on the $4.2 million home at 117 Malba Drive this February,” said Testani.
“It’s a gorgeous Tudor with a wine cellar, four-car underground garage, seven bedrooms and access to the water in the back of the house — and, of course, boating rights for the homeowners, and it’s on a 120-by-200-foot plot of land.”
Another neighborhood, Bayside Gables, a gated community on the water, is so exclusive it is rumored that some of its residents consider it an offshoot of Bayside instead of part of it. And Bayside itself stacks up pretty well.
“The average price for a home in Queens is $550,000, [but] in Bayside, prices can vary from $700,000 to $1.5 million in a two-block radius,” said Donna Reardon, a broker with Prudential Douglas Elliman. “And then there are luxury homes with water views on the market for $2.5 million.”
Other talked-about Queens locales are Long Island City and Forest Hills. However, the long-awaited vision of Long Island City as New York City’s fourth-biggest commercial district hasn’t yet panned out. But a 2001 rezoning opened the mostly industrial area to residential development like the Gantry on Fifth Street, which came on the market in late 2005 with condo prices starting in the mid-$400,000s.
Smaller properties in the area are appreciating. Annie Siegel, a hypnotherapist who bought a home on Fifth Street a decade ago for $125,000, said a recent appraisal valued the property at about $1 million.
In historic Forest Hills, condominiums appeal to buyers. Dinko Grancaric, the co-owner of Century 21 Benjamin Realty in Forest Hills, told The Real Deal earlier this year that the Windsor condo building is “very successful.”
“There are a few new projects in the planning stages, and there is room for three or four other high-rises because the Windsor project did very well,” he said. Two-bedroom units have sold there for more than $1 million.