Brooklyn Home Sales Set Another Record

Brooklyn home prices continue to soar. The price of homes in the borough skyrocketed during the second quarter of the year – the fourth consecutive quarter to set a median price record, Crain’s reports. The borough’s explosive growth has continued nearly unabated since the Great Recession. At a time when real estate experts are wondering where the price ceiling is, the market notched another quarter of solid gains as the median price of a home reached a record $795,000 – more than 20 percent higher than the second quarter last year.

Is there no end to this insanity?

"We don’t really know where the limit is," says Jonathan Miller, whose appraisal firm Miller Samuel authored a market report for Douglas Elliman Real Estate. "It doesn’t feel like it’s slowing down."

In fact, the pace of the market is the fastest that Miller has ever recorded. Buyers snapped up 2,845 homes, the highest volume in a decade, with nearly a quarter of those trading at above the listing price, suggesting bidding wars were common. Meanwhile, available inventory fell to its lowest level in nine years and is expected to remain low as would-be sellers hold off advertising their digs in the hopes that prices will rise even higher in the future. In Brooklyn as in Ayn Rand, it turns out, greed is good.

Brooklyn’s powerful market may also be affecting home sales beyond the borough’s borders. "Brooklyn is not only driving up its own numbers, it is impacting the areas around it, specifically Queens and the suburban markets," Miller says.

While less intense, the numbers in Queens show a similar dynamic: Demand drove up the median sale price to a record $510,000, nearly 10 percent higher than the same time last year. That demand along with inaction from holdout, would-be sellers contributed to its lowest inventory in 12 years. Demand for homes on the market created the fastest-paced second quarter Miller has recorded in a dozen years.