Most of the city’s residential listings are collecting dust, but in Queens homes are flying off the shelf.
A new report by StreetEasy ranked the top neighborhoods where homes are selling the most rapidly according to median days on the market in the third quarter.
In South Queens, where the median sales price rose 5 percent year-over-year to $545,000, homes took an average of 60 days to sell – the shortest timespan in the city.
The city-wide median is 83 days.
In the borough’s northwest corner, the median number of days on market for properties in Astoria, Long Island City and Sunnyside stood at 70. Those neighborhoods also saw the biggest reduction in days-on-the-market, moving 17 days faster than they did a year earlier.
With the exception of Northwest Brooklyn (Dumbo, Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill and Fort Greene) the top selling neighborhoods were all in Queens. Meanwhile, in 60 percent of the city’s submarkets, days on market ticked up.
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It comes even as prices in Queens reached records highs, despite sales activity continuing to plunge for the eighth consecutive quarter.
“I’m very happy that Queens is finally having its time in the sun,” said Eric Benaim, CEO and founder of local brokerage, Modern Spaces.
He said his firm was noticing the uptick, particularly in Long Island City where, as of August, 414 units have sold to date this year — a huge jump from the total of 254 units sold last year.
Benaim attributed the influx in deals to increasing number of buyers “debating” between Queens and Manhattan.
“We haven’t really seen that before,” he said. “They’re circling between Manhattan and Queens.”
Write to Erin Hudson at ekh@therealdeal.com