Brooklyn is booming.
According to Ariel Property Advisors’ half year report for 2014, the dollar volume of commercial building sales in Brooklyn topped $3 billion. That marks a 73 percent hike from the first half of 2013. The transaction volume in the first six months was up by about a third (646 transactions), while the property volume went up 38 percent (884 properties).
“There’s a strong demand for the borough and in general the economy is improving,” said Jonathan Berman, vice president at Ariel Property Advisors.
The growth is primarily spurred by multifamily sales, said Ariel’s Michael Tortorici. Consider this: the dollar volume of multifamily sales in the borough hit $1.7 billion in the first of 2014. That works out to a 120 percent increase from the first half of 2013.
Moreover, multifamily sales accounted for two-thirds of the borough’s investment property transaction volume and more than half its dollar volume in the first six months of the year.
The data showed that the biggest growth took place in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights and Bushwick. In those neighborhoods, 252 properties were sold in 170 transactions totaling nearly $710 million. About a quarter of the borough’s total investment property transactions took place in these neighborhoods.
In Williamsburg and Greenpoint, 128 buildings were sold in 101 transactions that totaled $544 million.