As Brooklyn real estate got pricier and pricer in the ’00s, a greater number of Manhattanites moved here, according to an article in the Observer. IRS data shows that more than 3,700 Manhattan residents moved to Brooklyn in 2006 (the most recent year for which such stats are available), the most this decade. At the same time, more than 10,000 Brooklynites have moved to either Staten Island or Queens every year since ’02. The point of the article is that while Brooklyn has continued to get more expensive (per Miller Samuel, median condo/co-op price in Manhattan in ’07=$850,000; per Corcoran, median price for a brownstone Brooklyn unit last year was $590,000) and the pricing gulf between the two has narrowed, moving to Brooklyn is no longer driven purely by economic necessity: “Perhaps it’s that Brooklyn has ceased to be simply another economic option for priced-out Manhattanites; instead, it’s now safer than ever to assume that moving to Brooklyn is more of a social or personal decision than an economic one. It will only become more so as real estate differences between the two melt away.”
Where Brooklyn Gets Its New Yorkers [NY Observer]
Graphic by Nigel Holmes for The Observer