Outlook 2007: Longs and Shorts
Note: We’re moving this post up from yesterday to encourage more input.Welcome to the third annual installment of our market prognostications. Last year, we picked Prospect Heights and Carroll Gardens to outperform and Williamsburg to slump, which in retrospect look like pretty good calls. As for next year, our eyes will be on the areas…
Note: We’re moving this post up from yesterday to encourage more input.Welcome to the third annual installment of our market prognostications. Last year, we picked Prospect Heights and Carroll Gardens to outperform and Williamsburg to slump, which in retrospect look like pretty good calls. As for next year, our eyes will be on the areas bordering Prospect Park that have the location and housing stock on their sides but have yet to attract widespread interest from the gentrifying crowd. We’d also be front-running the newly Brooklyn-focused Landmarks Preservation Commission by looking in spots like the soon-to-be-designated Crown Heights North. On the downside, it’s hard to see how increasing supply of run-of-the-mill condos coming on line in Williamsburg won’t continue to put downward pressure on prices. We’re not as wary about the effect of Atlantic Yards on surrounding real estate as some and continue to think that Prospect Heights has a lot to offer. As has been mentioned before, quality brownstones should continue to find buyers while those in more marginal neighborhoods and lacking architectural detail will likely have a tough time. Looking back on last year’s post, we can be thankful that we got our wish of a gourmet market (sorta) in the form of Choice. Now if we could just get a friggin’ cheese shop we’d be really psyched.
Market Predictions for 2006 [Brownstoner]
Looks like DDDB supporters are trying to hijack another board. Just ignore them and stay on topic. Picks for 2007!
Long – “brownstone Bed-Stuy” (great housing stock in brownstone belt next to Fulton Street between CH and SH, and excellent transportation), Crown Heights North (great housing stock, activist community, good transportation and future landmark designation), Prospect Heights (AY hysteria will produce great deals), Sunset Park (relative ease in gentrifying non-black minority community, good food and increasing amenities) and Stuyvesant Heights (great housing stock, stable middle class nabe with long time residents, clean/well kept blocks and transportation – A express).
Short – “fringe Bed-Stuy” (area far north and close to Williamsburg and far east and close to Brownsville – pocket of crime and poverty too entrenched to see any meaningful improvements this decade), Bushwick (all broker hype, dark and dreary), Greenpoint (poor transportation, lacking amenities and condo overdevelopment), South Park Slope (becoming Fedders Town), Williamsburg (too many crappy/cheesy condo developments on one end and an ever expanding Warsaw ghetto on the other – yuck).
West 9th street should appreciate with the whole foods and other projects in the gowanus area
Re 9:46 a.m.: I’m a bit doubtful about the area of Bed-Stuy around Classon and Franklin. Deeper into the neighborhood is where the more beautiful homes are, around Lewis and Stuyvesant Avenues.
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PAY ATTENTION: Bed-Stuy! Bed-Stuy! Bed-Stuy! From Classon to Saratoga, DeKalb to Fulton. There are beautiful homes all over. Always have been. The amenities have been slower in coming, but they are. I’ve not been wrong yet.
PLG should continue to rise. Look for prices on houses surrounding the Lefferts Manor historic district in PLG to go up or at the least not fall (I think prices have peaked in the manor itself). Condo prices on Ocean Avenue in PLG should also rise as many of those buildings are renovating and more wealthy folk follow the wealthy folk who have already moved in (the change in demographic of these buildings has been startling).
Ditmas and Beverly Square West will continue to rise. Cortelyou is slated for a major makeover (historic lighting, benches etc.) some of whic has already taken place. The commercial rebirth there is not limited to “one good restaurant” despite what an earlier poster says (there’s Vox Pop cafe/bookstore/concert space, Cinco de Mayo, Picket Fence, the fancy restaurant next door and more coming). The local PS (139) on Argyle is on the rise with an effective new principal, magnet status and two mini-schools with parent involvement (PS 139 is a good choice for PLG residents as well). The local merchants association is headed by former senate candidate Sander Hicks and seems likely to get a lot done and the neighborhood has strong block associations (and no, I don’t live there).
I agree that Crown Heights will continue to rise as well.
so much talk about AY, which will not be completed for several years. What are the predictions for 2007.
AY is not the only new project in the works. stay focused.
Something that I think needs to be looked into is the subway transportation glut that AY will bring about. Won’t the fact that all those new AY residents will be piling on to the trains that go through AY (which is quite a few) and make the morning commute that much more miserable…won’t that affect people wanting to live out here? The trains are already over-crowded as is…
Didn’t that whole area of Manhattan experience general decline in the 1970’s to 1990’s, though 12:42? I think what was being said was when a neighborhood was already very desireable and fashionable and on an upswing, bringing in projects didn’t drag it down. And why is anyone talking about “projects” with regard to AY anyway? From everything I’ve read and heard, the “affordable” units at AY will be for middle-class not low-income people. They’ll cost too much for low-income families.
“rojects located in a desireable neighborhood do not make the values of surrounding houses/buildings go down. I’ve never seen that.”
I lived on CPW and 100’th street. The Public housing projects north of 100’th street were a drag on the neighborhood and prevented the gentrification of Manhattan Avenue and hurt the value of Park West Village to the south of the projects. And there is a police precinct on 100’th st.
Projects located in a desireable neighborhood do not make the values of surrounding houses/buildings go down. I’ve never seen that.
However projects in a blighted neighborhood that’s isolated or more distant from an upscale area (I’m thinking of an area of Minneapolis I saw) will keep that neighborhood down for a while. It makes it slow to improve a neighborhood. Not impossible, but slow.