Home sales climb to 15-year highs in Brooklyn and Queens

Brooklyn’s housing market began 2022 the same way it ended 2021: breaking records. And with plenty of inventory still available, there’s no sign the party will end anytime soon.

More homes were sold in Brooklyn in the first three months of this year than in any quarter since 2006, according to the latest report from appraisal firm Miller Samuel. The borough’s 3,666 sales represented a 30 percent jump over the same period last year — marking six consecutive quarters of year-over-year increases — and were up 14 percent from the fourth quarter of 2021.

As sales have soared, so have prices: For the seventh time in the last eight quarters, the median price for a home sold in Brooklyn set a new record. As of March, it was $948,500, a five percent increase over the same time last year.

“Trend indicators overall continued to be at or flirt with records. And I think that’s has been a characteristic of Brooklyn for the last five to six years, with or without a pandemic,” said Jonathan Miller, who authored the report.

Queens somewhat mirrored Brooklyn. The borough saw 4,000 sales in the quarter, the most in any first quarter since 2007, and a 22 percent year-over-year jump — marking five straight quarters of annual increases. A median-priced home in Queens sold for $718,444, 9 percent more than a year ago .

Supply in Queens, meanwhile, has dwindled. Listing inventory in the borough saw an annual decline for the third consecutive quarter, down 13 percent to 4,914 homes.

Inventory was steadier in Brooklyn, increasing 1 percent year-over-year to 2,913 homes for sale.

Still, both boroughs offer more homes for sale now than they did before the pandemic. Inventory in Brooklyn was up 11 percent from two years ago, while Queens saw a nearly 8 percent jump.

“One of the reasons why sales are up is because inventory has not collapsed,” Miller said. “That’s the unified characteristic of the suburb of the city, in sharp contrast to the center for the suburban markets.”

Miller called the outer-borough markets “hybrids” of Manhattan and the suburbs.

“The inventory not being obliterated by demand is a city characteristic, unlike the suburbs, but the record pricing is more of a characteristic of the suburbs than it is of Manhattan,” he explained.

Another “hybrid” market covered in the report was Riverdale in the Bronx, where the number of sales increased annually for the fifth-consecutive quarter. But the median sales price actually declined 10 percent from the prior quarter to $330,000, more or less back to where it stood a year ago.

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