Brownstone Brooklyn has become so posh that the number of homebuyers who individually earn $300,000-a-year or more spiked an eye-popping 316 percent in the first quarter of 2014, compared with the same period last year, according to a new report.
“People who make $300,000 and more are becoming increasingly interested in Brownstone Brooklyn,” said Aleksandra Scepanovic, managing director of Ideal Properties, that released the report.
“It is safer than it has ever been and it is in the news for achieving record home-sale prices,” she said.
The $300,000-plus income earners now represent 30 percent of all Brooklyn homebuyers, the report stated.
The report covers condos, co-ops, and town houses in Brownstone Brooklyn, which comprises 15 neighborhoods in north and northwest Brooklyn, including Carroll Gardens, Clinton Hill, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Dumbo, Fort Greene, Williamsburg, the Navy Yard and Greenpoint.
The top five neighborhoods attracting buyers in the first quarter of 2014 were Park Slope, Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill and Fort Greene, according to the report.
Why more rich people are buying in Brooklyn is hard to determine.
“It’s a, ‘which came first, the chicken or the egg’ kind of question,” Scepanovic said.
“Properties are commanding higher prices than they did a year ago and that means they need to attract people with more money to buy them.”
The average price of a single-family Brooklyn town house is $2.2 million, up from $1.5 million a year ago, according to a different first-quarter market report from The Corcoran Group.
Brownstone Brooklyn also appears to be a young person’s game.
Ideal Properties found that 52 percent of the buyers were in their 30s, and many — 39 percent — had lived in Brooklyn before buying. The next largest group, Manhattanites, were 17 percent of the buyers.