Downtown Brooklyn tops StreetEasy’s list of 2019 neighborhoods to watch

Downtown Brooklyn has been named StreetEasy’s 2019 neighborhood to watch, topping the list of ten neighborhoods where the real estate search engine saw the highest annual growth in asking rent, median sales price, user searches, and new construction units.

The list of neighborhood’s to watch takes a decided turn from north Brooklyn, where the looming L train shutdown has been snarling demand for real estate for months. As of October, renter demand in Williamsburg fell by one percent while at the same time, demand has risen in every single other New York neighborhood. “That’s partly why Downtown Brooklyn comes in first on our list,” the StreetEasy report reads. “It attracts residents from Williamsburg and beyond with luxurious new buildings, easy access to several subway lines, and prices comparable to the ‘Burg.”

Just four out of the top ten neighborhoods are outside of Brooklyn. Coming in at nos. two, five, and six, respectively, are East Flatbush, Crown Heights, and Bedford-Stuyvesant, owing to the universal push across the city for cheaper: cheaper land for developers, and cheaper rents and asking prices for New Yorkers. The median rent in East Flatbush hovers around $2,100 and in Bed-Stuy around $2,499; that’s markedly less expensive than Brooklyn’s overall median rent of $2,539 and New York’s overall median rent of $2,677.

Although it didn’t make the cut, StreetEasy has given an honorable mention to Long Island City where the site has “seen buyer interest in the area skyrocket” following Amazon’s HQ2 announcement in November. NYCEDC president James Patchett, who had a hand in putting the HQ2 deal together, might think that there will be “no new residents moving to Long Island City as a result of this deal,” but that’s already verifiably false. StreetEasy found that the volume of buyer searches in the Long Island City area was up more than 500 percent in the days immediately following the announcement.

Love the top ten list or hate it, it isn’t based on judgement calls but rather four key performance indicators: change in median asking rent, annual change in median sale price, annual change in user searches that include a given neighborhood on StreetEasy, and the amount of new construction in the neighborhood. Without further ado, and with the methodology firmly in mind, here’s the top ten neighborhoods to watch in 2019 according to StreetEasy.

StreetEasy

Absent from this year’s list is last year’s crowning neighborhood, West Harlem, as well as ... every single other neighborhood named on last year’s list. To that, StreetEasy economic data analyst, and the report’s author, Nancy Wu, says, “New York City is constantly changing, and the broader dynamics that impact the city—whether transportation changes, shifting zoning laws, new community amenities, or otherwise—have a direct impact on how renters, buyers and developers interact with the neighborhoods around them.”

“In the case of 2019, the looming L train shutdown and wave of new construction in more affordable neighborhoods are the driving forces that led to the new composition of neighborhoods that made up the list.”

• StreetEasy’s NYC neighborhoods to watch in 2019 [StreetEasy]
• ‘West Harlem’ tops StreetEasy’s list of 2018 neighborhoods to watch [Curbed]