June 9, 2004
Brooklyn Condos Are Hot
Condos are booming in Brooklyn, with reports that condo transfers are up 124% and condo prices have increased 19-24%. Neighborhoods like Park Slope and Cobble Hill are growing as become more and more attractive to people fleeing Manhattan apartment prices, while Williamburg and Greenpoint are "emerging" areas for condos. Right, none of this is surprising - it's more confirmation of what everyone else suspected. And it's a chance for someone from the Real Estate Board to comment about how hot Brooklyn is with "It clearly shows the extraordinary interest in Brooklyn." Feh - Brooklyn's been interesting for a while - just not to condo developers. What will the next big Brooklyn neighborhoods be? Red Hook always seems like it's on the verge... What about Windsor Terrace and Kensington, just south of Park Slope?
Curbed on Brooklyn real estate happenings.
|
Advertisement: Gothamist Continues Below!
Post a comment (Comment Policy)
sadly, this friday will be my office's last day with our amazing lower manhattan/brooklyn bridge/statue of liberty view in DUMBO, as we are being relocated for - you guessed it - condos.
we'll stay in the neighborhood and we've still got a great view of brooklyn heights and the lower east side [no more bridge for us, that part of the skyline is obscured by the giant red/white water tower on the sweeney building]
I do love DUMBO. I visit there almost every night after dinner. But to force businesses out of an industrial, commercial, neighborhood seems to make little sense.
The next "hot" 'hood in Brooklyn will be Bedford Stuyvesant. You may laugh, but the brownstones in that neighborhood rival Park Slope and it probably has more of them with good transportation links. The prices there have already gone way up.
WINDY T RULES!
I have lived in Windsor Terrace for 7 years.
A wonderful, quiet neighborhood...close enough to bike/walk/3 minute drive to bars/restaurants in slope. I've noticed that new my neighbors are now young would-be Park Slopers. As far as development: Please, no more condos for this low rise neighborhood. Developers have put up ugly shit boxes on Prospect Park Southwest (one of them has such bad construction, the water pipes crapped out in the winter).
We don't have landmark preservation status like Park Slope, so we're vulnerable to ass bandits who put up ugly brick condos that don't fit in with the architecture that made Windsor Terrace cool in the first place. Actually, the architecture is all over the map, little frame houses and limestones...but hey, there's no shopping really, and no hip restaurants so maybe the world will forget about us.
who lives there? overflow from the slope. sidebar:
Some of the lesbians that were pushed out of Park Slope after they gentrified it, have moved to Windsor Terrace and bought houses. We call it Dyke Terrace some days, when you run into like 7 lesbians who are toting painting and sanding supplies to their houses.
(yep, I'm one of them)
Park Slope used to be filled with lesbians when it was an undiscovered hood, and now its filled with straight professionals and their shrieking strollers. (I remember being a kid and seeing famous radical feminist in overalls pushing veggies around the food co-op).
In Windy T, there are still the wonderful old Irish folk who run the neighborhood and the VFW Post. They are friendly and very good neighbors. Houses used to be sold by word of mouth and within the family.
The whole cool thing about living in Windsor Terrace is the proximity of Prospect Park, a somewhat decent subway close by (F), very close to good restaurants in the Slope, and the delight of coming home to a real neighborhood, with sky and grass and trees, where you can easily park your beater car. (10 minutes to downtown via car and Brooklyn Batter Tunnel, thanks to EZ pass.)
But there is very little housing stock. It is a low density hood. I'm hoping everyone will obsess over Red Hook and we'll be forgotten.
We were forced out of our DUMBO loft a little over a year ago to make way for luxury condos and West Elm. erghhh.
The owner of the Williamsburg Bank Building is selling it to condo developers. Goodbye dentists, hello multi-million dollar views -- as long as you've got a few extra million to toss at an 800-square foot location with all the elevator equipment taking up the middle of your space.
Here in Prospect Heights development is largely limited by available land. But a lot that was empty for the first 11 years of my residence here has been in condo construction for the last two years, and it's only six stories tall. The noise of course has persisted during the day all those months. I could have done without this development, and will be glad when owners can move in.
pedro, you are so right - i'm already seeing far more honkeys (like myself, hehehe) at the train station in bed stuy... it's still bed stuy tho, at this point. kind of funny, cab drivers are like "you live WHERE? i'm dropping you off at your front door!"
pedro, you are so right - i'm already seeing far more honkeys (like myself, hehehe) at the train station in bed stuy... it's still bed stuy tho, at this point. kind of funny, cab drivers are like "you live WHERE? i'm dropping you off at your front door!" but, yeah - the more industrious yuppies (and the "our first home" couples) are being sent to bed stuy now...