We got our hands on Corcoran’s Q2 sales data, and it shows that the state of the Brooklyn market isn’t quite as precarious as the Times made it out to be. The median price per square foot sales price of condos and co-ops is up 10 percent over this time last year, to $560,000, and there was a 4 percent reduction in condo/co-op inventory. In terms of townhouses, while the median price on one-families was down 3 percent from Q2 ’07 levels, to $965,000, the median price on 2-4 families was up 6 percent, to $1,240,000. In fact, all the brownstone Brooklyn neighborhoods had pretty substantial price increases in the larger townhouse category, and inventory was extremely tight. The most startling figure in the report is the 15 percent decrease in median prices for Williamsburg condos, but even that doesn’t seem so horrible when you factor in that Corcoran had 47 percent more condo listings between April and June ’08 compared to the same three months in ’07. Another mediating factor to consider in viewing the drop in median price of Williamsburg condos: Many developers began skewing their mix of inventory towards studios and one-bedrooms since those were the units that were selling best; if there were more small apartments in the 2008 data, one would expect to see average and median prices declining. Conclusion: We don’t think the party’s over and done with in Brooklyn, either.
Manhattan ‘Still a Party’; Hangover for Williamsburg? [Brownstoner]