It's Official: Brooklyn Real Estate Is Back

This just in from a press release from the Real Estate Board of New York: New York real estate is back from the dead. “The luxury market continues to show strength but a broader look at various market segments shows that the residential real estate market has recovered,” said REBNY president Steven Spinola. The evidence? “The number of sales of all homes (cooperatives, condominiums, and one-to-three-family dwellings) citywide climbed 11 percent from the first quarter of last year, and four percent from the previous quarter, to 10,012 sales,” said the release. “Median sales prices in the first quarter of 2013 climbed seven percent from the first quarter of last year to $480,000, the highest median sales price for all homes in the city since 2008.” More specifically, in Brooklyn, sales for the first quarter of this year totalled $1.6 billion, a 21 percent increase over the first quarter of 2011.  The biggest number of sales occurred in Park Slope, Bed Stuy, Gravesend, Kensington and Bay Ridge, in that order. But, cautioned REBNY, inventory of new developments in Williamsburg is low (until all the new builds finish up, that is!) “There were 73 condominium sales in Williamsburg during the first quarter of 2013, a post-recession low for the Brooklyn neighborhood,” said the report. “This is a 52 percent decrease from the first quarter of last year due to a lack of new inventory. The last time there were fewer condo sales in the first quarter in Williamsburg was in 2009, immediately after the financial crisis.”