Express yourself

To get to Brooklyn’s Columbia Street Waterfront District by subway, take the F train to Bergen Street or Carroll Street. Then start walking west. You’ll cross scene-y Smith Street and Court Street. Keep going past Cobble Hill or Carroll Gardens proper, where townhouses line tree-shaded streets, until finally you hit the screaming, dusty BQE — over which you must go.

If you’re at Congress Street, which extends from Bergen and where the highway is sunken, you can simply cross over the six lanes of traffic. If you’ve chosen Carroll, you’ll have to climb an Escherian set of stairs.

The little enclave you’ll find on the other side, set on the water and offering striking views of Manhattan, is drawing homebuyers from all over. And many of them are young families despite the commute — a slog for anyone, much less someone with a stroller and diaper bags.

In fact, units in the handful of new condo buildings that have sprung up in the area are disappearing nearly as quickly as they come on the market. And they’re fetching prices as high as many prime Brooklyn neighborhoods.

Since launching sales in October, 100 Congress St., adjacent to the BQE, has 25 accepted offers on its 37 total condos. One-bedrooms start at $360,000 and 500 square feet. But it’s the three-bedroom, three-bathroom, 1,450-square-foot combinations of two units, priced at just under $1.1 million, that are moving the fastest.

“We attribute [the success] to the fact that everyone buying in the building are families, and we’ve been very accommodating in terms of combining units for them,” says Alain Kodsi, manager of SDS Brooklyn, which is developing 100 Congress.

One block south, at 110 Warren St., Columbia Commons has unloaded more than half of its 42 condos, for an average of $700 per square foot since it started selling in May. And seven blocks south of that, all 14 condos are under contract after less than two months of sales at 25 Carroll St., a conversion of a five-story manufacturing building into lofts priced from $550 to $700-plus per square foot.

“We were surprised by the demand,” says Lindsay Barton Barrett, a Corcoran Group broker who teamed up with her husband, architect Alex Barrett of Barrett Design and Development, to develop 25 Carroll. “We figured because of the location, it wouldn’t be right for everyone.”

So, what gives?

Roberta Benzilio, executive director of sales for Halstead Property, says it’s a simple case of supply and demand. Much of the neighborhood, though separated by the BQE, is just west of Cobble Hill, one of the most desirable areas in Brooklyn, what with its restaurants, boutiques and beautiful housing stock.

In fact, it’s a neighborhood with so much resident loyalty that those who can’t afford to grow within Cobble Hill, to buy a townhouse when their family expands, are likely willing to look just outside of it, even if it means schlepping over an overpass to get to the subway.

“There is a limited inventory in this part of Brooklyn; there are a lot of people who wanted to stay in the neighborhood but have a larger space,” says Kellee Buhler, senior vice president at Halstead, which is marketing Columbia Commons.

That building, too, has seen the highest demand for its larger units. Of the 10 three-bedrooms (from 1,272 to 1,333 per square foot) Buhler had to offer, there is only one left, and all of the two-bedroom, two-bathroom units have already sold.

Chris Valentino and his wife, Mary, purchased one of the three-bedrooms.

“We’re having a baby in December, and we were in a one-bedroom off of Bleecker, which was quite noisy. So we definitely needed another bedroom,” Valentino says.

The couple landed in Brooklyn after being priced out of Manhattan.

“We looked at other areas of Brooklyn, Westchester, Connecticut, and what it came down to was we both need to be in the city for work, and we wanted to be close to home,” adds Valentino, who grew up in Bay Ridge.

“We know the location because my sister is on Sackett between Hicks and Columbia, and we have a friend on Carroll [between] Hicks and Columbia. They both really like the area. And my sister’s [kids] are in PS 129; she’s happy about that.”

Compared to Manhattan, the area is less expensive, but prices at Columbia Commons are comparable with some of the more popular areas of Brooklyn.

“There isn’t a lot of product in Cobble Hill, so it’s supply and demand,” Benzilio says. “It becomes a gradual driving up of the surrounding areas.”

“Finding comps was difficult because there hadn’t been any new development in this neighborhood,” Buhler says.

Over at 100 Congress, “We repriced the units 20 percent below what we anticipated pricing it,” Kodsi says. “We priced them to sell quickly, and now we’ve put in a price increase. We were not expecting to have such a huge turnout. No one thought we’d have accepted offers on more than 60 percent of the units in just three weeks.”

Buying a home isn’t the only big expense that comes with this area, though.

“We do have a car; it’s kind of a prerequisite for living here,” says Bill Hilgendorf, who is moving with his wife, Maria Cristina Rueda, who is also pregnant, into a one-bedroom with a home office at 25 Carroll St.

But what is lost in convenience is made up for in peace and quiet. Just north of the neighborhood, Pier 6, a portion of Brooklyn Bridge Park, is already open. So is the Brooklyn Greenway, a bike lane that travels along the water. And the neighborhood is sprinkled with restaurants, like local favorite Alma, and craft studios.

Hilgendorf and Rueda have been living in Carroll Gardens, which they find hectic. When they decided to move, they knew they would look in the Columbia Street Waterfront District — though Hilgendorf calls the area Red Hook, as do many old-timers and locals who aren’t in the business of selling real estate.

(“If you ask people who have lived in the area for a while, they all consider it Red Hook; anything west of the BQE is Red Hook,” says Hilgendorf. “The Realtors like to call it Carroll Gardens West or Columbia Street Waterfront.”)

Hilgendorf lived west of the BQE when he first moved to New York, and that’s where he opened his furniture design shop and studio, Uhuru Design, which has recently expanded.

“For Manhattanites, Brooklyn seems like the suburbs. But Court and Smith Streets [are] really busy,” Hilgendorf says. “We wanted to get away from that, but we didn’t want to leave the city. We liked the idea of Red Hook being off the beaten path. It’s harder to access, but that’s the reason it’s kept its charm and hasn’t exploded into the next Williamsburg or busy commercial area.”