Brooklyn Homes Hold There Value

The Mortgage-Pro · Site Admin Joined: 19 Jan 2005 Posts: 2248

BY ELIZABETH HAYS
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Rest easy, Brooklyn home owners: Your investment is more than safe after all.

Despite a published report, prices for single-family Brooklyn homes across the borough are skyrocketing - as they are in other parts of the state - and not tanking, real-estate agents said.

"The demand for Brooklyn is hotter than it's ever been," said John Reinhardt, president and CEO of Fillmore Real Estate, which has 20 offices across Brooklyn.

Reinhardt said that prices for single-family homes in Brooklyn are up 10% to 25%, depending on the neighborhood.

"Many parts of Brooklyn are on fire," he added, listing East Williamsburg, Bushwick, Clinton Hill and Crown Heights.

A report by the New York State Association of Realtors found that prices for single-family homes in Brooklyn dropped a whopping 29% between 2002 and 2004, from $332,000 to $235,000.

The New York Post reported the decline and called Brooklyn's supposed free fall "a notable - and unexplained exception" to the state's thriving real estate market.

But Realtors' agency spokesman Salvatore Prividera said the Post report was misleading. He said he explained to a Post reporter the Brooklyn data was incomplete and gave an inaccurate portrayal of the borough's housing market.

The agency's statistics were skewed because only 19 Brooklyn housing sales were reported to their organization in 2004, Prividera said.

By comparison, 12,642 home sales were reported for Suffolk County.

"We were disappointed that our explanation for the data - that we did report - was not adequately portrayed nor relayed to the [Post] readers," Prividera said.

Post spokesman Howard Rubenstein declined to comment.

Melinda Magnett, president of Corcoran Group Brooklyn, said there is no doubt home prices are booming in Brooklyn.

"It's up, absolutely up," said Magnett, whose firm specializes in the red-hot markets of Brownstone Brooklyn, where homes routinely top $1 million.

In rapidly gentrifying Bedford-Stuyvesant, prices are up a mind-blowing 83%, she said.

Reinhardt said Fillmore has also seen prices spike in southern Brooklyn. In Marine Park, a typical single-family home goes for $400,000, compared with $350,000 a year ago, he said.