BROOKLYN — Midwood, a quiet neighborhood between Prospect Park and Coney Island, saw its rentals fly off the market faster than any other neighborhood in the city last month, according to a StreetEasy report released Friday.
This south-central Brooklyn area, home to the famous Di Fara pizza, saw its apartments rented after a median of just 11 days.
It was trailed by rentals in Prospect Park South, the Flatbush area along the southern edge of the greenspace, where apartments were priced similarly — both had median asking rents in August of $1,900 a month. Apartments there stayed on the market a mere 13 days.
Are Midwood and Prospect Park South the next "it" neighborhoods?
A decade ago, renters began putting Prospect Heights and Clinton Hill on their list. Now the focus has shifted southward to Ditmas Park, Midwood and Prospect Park South, said Alan Lightfeldt, a data scientist for StreetEasy.
"South Brooklyn checks off a lot of boxes that New Yorkers are looking for, such as transit access, relatively affordable rent prices and plenty of dining and retail options," he said.
"Prospect Park South and Midwood are the markets with the shortest time on market because renters are clamoring for a 24/7 community that is relatively affordable, and they’re finding it in South Brooklyn."
While other relatively lower-priced areas also had fast paced rental markets, like Prospect-Lefferts Gardens and West Harlem, pricier neighborhoods like Brooklyn Heights (median rent $3,295 a month), the West Village (median rent $3,859 a month) and the Upper East Side (median rent $2,928 a month) all saw rentals snapped up fairly quickly. They had a median of 14 days on the market.
The areas with units that lingered longest also were fairly pricey. They included Midtown South (48 days) where the median asking rent was $3,850 a month, Midtown (36 days) where rents were $4,378 a month and Battery Park City (34 days) where landlords were asking $5,000 a month.
Downtown Brooklyn — where median asking rents were $3,300 a month — also had a relatively slow moving rental market. The median number of days on market was 30.
"The time it takes to rent out an apartment is a barometer of renter demand for a neighborhood, and the fastest moving markets in August may have different reasons for being popular among renters," Lightfeldt said.
For areas in South Brooklyn, price point is likely the driving force. For neighborhoods like the West Village and Brooklyn Heights, "New Yorkers dream of moving to these areas because of their charm and proximity to transit and retail and the competition is consistently fierce," he explained.
In Downtown Brooklyn, where the median asking rent was 24.5 percent above the Brooklyn median, the rental market appears to be saturated, Lightfeldt noted.
"After the recession, a wave of new development rental units hit this market," he said.
"Downtown Brooklyn is perhaps in the very rare and unusual situation of supply outpacing demand."
