NYC’s new most expensive neighborhoods might surprise you

Buyer bewealthy. Some surprising New York City neighborhoods surged to the top of the list of the city’s priciest dwellings between July and September 2016, according to property research firmProperty Shark.

The “Top 50 Most Expensive Neighborhoods in NYC Q3” list shows the changing real estate landscape of a city in which once-unpopular neighborhoods are suddenly all the rage.

“The way to think of this housing boom of the last four years is an outward radial push from Manhattan to brownstone Brooklyn and beyond to other boroughs and suburbs,” Jonathan Miller, an real estate consultant told Metro.

Chic areas in Manhattan still round out the top three spots: Tribeca and Soho remain lofty as the top two, with median sale prices of $4.44 million and $3.6 million respectively. Sale prices in both increased by more than 20 percent since last year.

Noho placed third and actually saw the typical sale price dip 46 percent since last year, to $2.66 million.

DUMBO landed in fourth place. Homes sold for around $2.5 million, which is a 54 percent increase from last year. The jump is being attributed to a luxury development at 1 John Street that sold 30 units in three months at no less than $2.2 million.

DUMBO’s place on the list is unusual because outer-borough neighborhoods generally do not out-price Manhattan’s notoriously pricy sections such as Greenwich Village, which is ninth on the list with a median sales price of $1.65 million.

“Brooklyn is no longer seen as the cheaper alternative. It’s Manhattan’s direct competitor. It’s its own brand,” said Miller. “Queens is the new Brooklyn. The Bronx is the new Queens.”

Another example of an outer-borough neighborhood that spiked is Forest Hills Garden—the rather exclusive area of Queens with large private homes. The neighborhood ranked eleventh on the list of 50 with a median sale price of $1.56 million,above both Midtown Manhattan and the Upper West Side.

It’s not that Manhattan has gotten less popular; explosive population growth (five years ahead of Census projections), as well as job growth (NYC currently has the highest amount of employees in history) has more people with fewer housing options, which skews the supply-demand dynamic towards luxury, Miller explained.

Miller also pointed out that the numbers on this quarter’s list are wildly skewed because of new housing developments that go up and then sell out in one quarter. “It means that a ton of property, or none, closed in a that quarter. It does not mean that prices have permanently changed somewhere and that people are facing massive depreciation.”

Another eye-popper is Roosevelt Island with a median sale price of $1.08 million, which represents a 128-percent increase from last year. It’s the biggest price jump on the list. Property Shark asserted that the increase is attributed to a lower number of transactions and influenced by co-op sales at two new developments, Island House and Riverwalk Court.

Areas that traditionally boast astronomical sales prices also became pricier: Greenwich Village saw a 61 percent year-to-year increase in the typical sales price to $1.65 million and Central Midtown recorded a 41 percent increase to $1.3 million.

Some neighborhoods retained their most-expensive status despite a decrease in the median sale price. NoHo, ranked high at the number three spot, dropped 46 percent from last year—the typical sale dipped from $7.6 million to $2.66 million. However, the figure is based on only six sales.