Brooklyn Homes Flying Off Shelves, Speed Nears 2016 Boom

Brooklyn homes are selling like the borough’s famous cheesecake, according to StreetEasy, spending a median of 50 days on the market in the second quarter. “This is the lowest since Q2 2016, when homes spent a median 42 days on market,” according to a report from the real estate site.

The fast-moving market and “surge in demand” is “largely due to near record low mortgage rates and the economy’s reopening,” according to the firm.

Inventory is still growing, though, with 8,461 properties on the market in the second quarter — a record, according to the report — even as “pending” sales also continue to climb. High inventory is good news for buyers, and may help explain why prices are ticking up at a relatively modest pace in Brooklyn and New York City in general vs. elsewhere in the country. (To put it in perspective, Brooklyn has already experienced explosive price increases since 2012.)

We’ve noticed some puzzling outlier high and low closed sale prices since January, however, that aren’t easily explained by condition or location. Prices increased in more than a few neighborhoods in the second quarter, including Ditmas Park, where the median closed sale price was $989,000, a jump of 68 percent.

In Bed Stuy, where the median asking price was $1.195 million in the second quarter, an increase of almost 10 percent over the same period last year, the actual median closed sale price was $987,000, an uptick of 3.9 percent.

Just about one in five — 19 percent, to be exact — listings had a price cut in the second quarter, according to StreetEasy. That’s slightly up from the previous quarter’s 17.8 percent. The number of listings that entered contract in the quarter was 3,132.

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