At the end of October, I wrote a piece based upon the writing of Dan Green of The Mortgage Report Blog in which I noted that there was confluence of good housing news over the last few months that had gone largely un-reported. In that spirit, I looked to see what was really happening in two Brooklyn neighbrhoods that sit adjacent to one another. Neither is particularly trendy, but both have been popular.
Often we judge what is going in the housing market mainly by where prices are going, up or down.
While this is an important indicator, there are some other variables that may add nuance to the story.
For example, I just finished looking at sales prices in two adjacent zip codes here in Brooklyn. By the way, Brooklyn is large enough that there are in excess of 30 zips in the borough.
One was Sunset Park, which is the further South of the two.
It sits between Bay Ridge, Borough Park and Greenwood Heights, which sits basically in the second zipcode I chose.
Greenwood sits around and below Greenwood Cemetery, within whose boundaries lie numerous well known Americans
The neighborhood is not currently as active in terms of sales as Sunset Park, but still desirable.
I looked at total sales, average sales price and average price per square in each zipcode. Additionally I broke the year down into the first six months compared to July through this week.
What I found was both expected and unexpected.
What I expected:
That sales volume would go down. That has been the pattern here in Brooklyn, and in NYC in general for the last several years.
That average sale prices would hold relatively steady. This, too, has been a pattern in our area.
What I didn't expect:
The reality was little different. Prices in both zip codes edged upwards, with Greenwood Heights gaining about 2.6% and Sunset Park gaining about 2.5%. This was somewhat surprising, since we have seen decreases in average sales price recently across other neighborhoods in Brooklyn.
The bigger surprise might have been that average price per square foot rose almost 3% from the first half of the year until this week. This is not the trend citiwide, but may have been influenced by the size of the sample.
Not as surprising was the fact that in Greenwood Heights recorded a 12% reduction in price per square foot.
This chart may make what has happened a little clearer. What we are seeing in Brooklyn is that the way housing is going is a nuanced, geographically-driven thing. Just looking at sales prices will not give us enough granularity to follow what is going on. I will continue to look at Brooklyn neighborhoods from a different perspective. It's always interesting to see what lies beneath the surface of the main real estate news.
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