Home Prices Rising Fastest in Crown Heights

Home prices are popping in Brooklyn, with average prices up 7 percent over the last year, new market data show. The average home price in the borough jumped to $569,799 in the first three months of 2011, up from $532,061 during the same period of 2010.

Prices in early 2011 were down a little from the last three months of 2010. But real estate expert Jonathan Miller believes the market has righted itself after the economic meltdown that began in 2008.

“It’s stable and improving,” said Miller, whose firm, Miller Samuel Inc., compiled the market data for Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

Sellers have gained the most in eastern Brooklyn’s poorest neighborhoods, including East New York, Brownsville and Crown Heights, where prices are up by 5.1 percent.

Those neighborhoods had been hardest hit by foreclosures.

“You’ve had a lot of weakness over the last two years,” Miller said.

His figures show prices of one- to three-family homes have rebounded most in the area.

In trendy Williamsburg and Greenpoint, prices were up 4.9 percent — a boost that was helped by a steep hike in prices of condos, which jumped 7.6 percent to an average $623,754.

Sellers also did well in upscale Downtown Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, Cobble Hill and nearby areas, where prices climbed 3.2 percent.

Big losers were sellers of brownstones in those neighborhoods, who saw prices drop 20.6 percent to an average of $1.12 million.

Brooklyn’s prices are surging compared to Queens, where prices have dropped 1 percent over the last year.

Miller says Queens’ real-estate market is “stable but fragile,” considering that prices have changed little while the total number of sales in the borough declined sharply, by 16.5 percent.

As in Brooklyn, one of Queens’ poorest neighborhoods rebounded the most, with prices climbing in the Rockaways by 6 percent.

Across the borough, average condo prices dropped 19.7 percent, to $273,873. But co-ops became pricier, jumping 3.5 percent, to $216,560.

The data doesn’t tell the whole story, Miller said, noting that a federal buyers’ tax credit led to a short-term boost in Queens prices in early 2010.

With the tax credit gone, fewer buyers are looking.