quotation-icon.jpgunless the city’s economy completely falls apart in a way that’s vastly disproportional to the rest of the country, you won’t see prices tank in “central” brooklyn as they have nationally. these neighborhoods improved in a sustainable way through renovations, through new businesses, through improved schools, and, yes, through quality new construction – all of which forces have less to do with speculation and a lot more to do with professionals and other middle- and upper-middle class people wanting to stay in the city and wanting to invest in their neighborhoods. unless things get really bad, i don’t see those people changing course drastically. especially now – most can’t afford to. yes, prices will continue to drop, until credit loosens up again and prices have come more in line with incomes and rentals. but expecting prices to return to pre-2000 prices, when brooklyn was a very different place, is evidence perhaps of having partaken of the smoke of ye olde crack pipe.

— by i disagree in Last Week’s Biggest Sales


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

Leave a Reply

  1. What a load of crap. This is based on what analysis?

    Whuh at 3:52 has it right.

    No one knows how far prices will fall but to argue that “Central Brooklyn,” whatever that means, is somehow immune is not rational. If 160,000 people in the in NYC lose their jobs next year (as the NYC Comptroller projects) owners will NEED to sell. And there will be no (or very few buyers, and still no liquidity). Also, numerous units in the “quality new construction” you cite are owned by speculators and investors who will run for the hills if they cant recoup their costs.

    Its true that prices should hold better in more established neighborhood like Park Slope, Cobble Hill, etc. than in fringe neighborhoods, but prices will fall everywhere.

  2. whuh – where’s the evidence that brooklyn’s UMC and MC owners were direct victims of bad loans? sure, they paid higher prices but most people i know are mortgaged within their means.

    the bankers and other financial professionals also fixed up homes and their rentals, helped get trees planted and medians created, started tremendously popular flea markets, helped improve schools, etc. (mopar, i agree with you on “marginal” brooklyn. i’m talking “prime +” brooklyn, which would include south slope, clinton hill, prospect heights, windsor terrace, parts of williamsburg, gowanus and red hook, maybe some others i’m less familiar with)
    some of this investment is absolutely illiquid to the investor. and if you don’t believe any of this adds real value to the buyer, how do you think desirable neighborhoods get created in the first place? obviously, it’s not entirely short commute times or hell’s kitchen would be as sought-after as CPW.

    what i’m saying boils down to: (1) i don’t think flight is going to be as extreme as some seem to be predicting; and (2) given that and the fact that a decent portion of price increases are due to real value rather than speculation, i don’t think the brooklyn market is in for as significant as a drop as the rest of the country.

    but who knows, i might be wrong. and if i am, i’ll be the first person in line for a fully-loaded $300K 2-BR doorman condo in tribeca.

  3. Eh, this quote is really wrong. “Prime” Brooklyn will go down only a little, if at all, just like the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1989 and dot-com crashes. “Marginal” Brooklyn has already dropped 40 percent in the last two weeks (compared with prices in 2007). It’s frightening. And there are only more pre-foreclosures and boarded-up buildings to come. It looks like Florida, Modesto, Arizona out there. Rest of Brooklyn would have to end up somewhere in the middle, I would think.

  4. You know, it isn’t right to say that Brooklyn is somehow better because there are more white people. There are more educated and sophisticated people of all races. Isn’t that a fairer statement?

  5. Some of that is true, but some is just bs spread by the media and other brooklyn-boosters. Schools for one have not improved at all since 2000. Test scores have increased, but most schools have gotten worse. It has also gotten much harder to get your kid into a decent district if you don’t live in one (which might be for the best).

    More generally, I’d agree that some Brownstone Brooklyn areas have changed a lot. But some really haven’t changed much since 2000. A friend of mine who used to live in PLG but moved out in 2002 recently visited and was shocked that the the neighborhood hadn’t changed at all except for one or two stores that he noticed. I’d bet the same could be said for many other areas too.

1 2 3