Real Estate

Bed-Stuy real estate is through the roof

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247 Hancock St., Bed-StuyWilliam Miller
247 Hancock St., Bed-StuyWilliam Miller
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247 Hancock St., Bed-StuyWilliam Miller
Owner Claudia MoranWilliam Miller
Owner Claudia MoranWilliam Miller
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247 Hancock St., Bed-StuyWilliam Miller
247 Hancock St., Bed-StuyWilliam Miller
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A room at 247 Hancock St. when the building was still single room occupancy housing.
The tree Moran planted when she first moved.
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These days, the bloodiest turf wars in Bed-Stuy involve multimillion-dollar real-estate deals.

The median price for homes in the hardscrabble Brooklyn neighborhood has skyrocketed in the past year — from $425,000 in the second quarter of 2013 to $630,000 this year, according to data from real-estate site StreetEasy.

The boost comes as an influx of tony buyers — from celebrities to “Park Avenue Princesses” — are ditching the price tags in Manhattan and flocking to the once-gritty outer-borough nabe, best known to outsiders from Spike Lee’s 1989 racial-tension drama “Do the Right Thing.”

247 Hancock St.Gregory P. Mango

“Bed-Stuy is the hottest neighborhood in Brooklyn,” said Ban Leow, a broker with Halstead Property. “It shot up from obscurity to the top place for bidding wars. It’s really making a name for itself. The limestones and brownstones here are beautiful.”

The numbers tell a story of gentrification that would make the Brooklyn-born Lee — a bitter foe of outsiders moving in — blow a gasket. The median asking price in Bed-Stuy jumped to $895,000 in June, a 50-percent hike over the same time last year. And nine of the top 15 residential sales in the past five years are from 2014, according to data from Property Shark Flip sales are more dramatic: A six-bedroom home built in 1899 that sold for $1.2 million in February was flipped for $2.1 million in an all cash deal this June.

Leow, who represented both the buyer and seller, said that home sales in Bed-Stuy are “insane.”

“Bed-Stuy is the hottest neighborhood in Brooklyn. It’s really making a name for itself. It shot up from obscurity to the top place for bidding wars. The limestones and brownstones here are beautiful,” Leow said.

The current Bed-Stuy home-sale record is the $2.25 million sale of 22 Arlington Place. The home sold for $400,000 more than its $1.85 million asking price after a bidding war that came even though it’s just 16-feet wide.

That home is exceedingly narrow, at just under 16 feet wide — a fact that did not deter multiple bidders and is another example of how competitive the market is, said Leow, who represented the buyer and seller in that deal as well.

Leow is now about to list a 40-foot-wide mansion at 247 Hancock St. for $6 million. A similar-sized mansion would sell for $40 million to $60 million in Manhattan, he said.

“There’s a new breed of Realtors bringing in buyers who are transplants from Manhattan, New Jersey and Connecticut,” said Leow. “They can afford to buy brownstones here. They are inviting their friends over for backyard barbecues and, in an infectious way, the neighborhood has taken off.”

People are flocking to Bed-Stuy even though its crime-plagued past is not yet behind it. NYPD data show that the 79th and 81st precincts, which cover the area, had 928 and 907 major crimes so far this year, respectively. That’s among the worst numbers in the city.

The new residents include fashionistas who would never have been caught dead in Brooklyn a few years ago. A former Vogue editor and her restaurateur husband even sold their $3.5 million Park Avenue penthouse to move into a $1.8 million Bed-Stuy mansion, said Leow, their broker.

Uma Thurman looked here as an investor for her brother, who was outbid and moved even farther away, to East Flatbush.

Brooklyn broker Kathleen Perkins, of Douglas Elliman, says that savvy buyers have caught onto the fact that Bed-Stuy is just “a few minutes” away from Clinton Hill, a more gentrified neighborhood with celebrity residents like Rosie Perez.

“Now, buyers are going to East New York,” said Brooklyn broker Kathleen Perkins of Douglas Elliman. “People are living on the far regions of the universe — anything to stay in New York City and not move to Jersey.”

As long as the neighborhoods are on the hipster “L” subway line, expect gentrification to continue, Leow said.