NEW YORK CITY — The number of home sales is on the rise in The Bronx and Staten Island while it's dropping in Manhattan and Brooklyn, according to a report of first quarter data from the Real Estate Board of New York released Tuesday.
Home sales in The Bronx and Staten Island jumped 35 percent from the year before, largely the result of a spike in sales of one- to three-family homes, the report found — and because of their lower prices compared to the rest of the city.
The average home costs $378,000 in the Bronx and $441,000 in Staten Island.
“With growing interest and activity, particularly in the Bronx and Staten Island, home buyers are finding and being attracted to more options at various price levels throughout all five boroughs,” John Banks III, REBNY’s president, said in a statement.
Meanwhile in Manhattan and Brooklyn, where average prices continued to climb higher — $1.865 million and $809,000, respectively — there was a slight dip in sales volume over the past year.
The volume of sales in Manhattan dropped 2 percent, while prices rose 5 percent, and Brooklyn saw a 4 percent fall in sales while prices spiked 8 percent.
“The Bronx is super-hot,” said Manny Pantiga, of the Pantiga Group, a Bronx-based real estate firm. “We’re seeing bidding wars or multiple offers on every property.”
East Bronx areas like Country Club and Morris Park are particularly bustling, as is the South Bronx, said Pantiga, who estimated that about a quarter of home buyers in the borough are coming from the other boroughs, especially Brooklyn and Queens.
“What the Bronx has overall is terrific value. You have comparable commutes to Queens and Brooklyn,” he said. “You have parks, the Bronx Zoo, botanical garden, easy access to Jersey, Westchester, Connecticut. You have City Island with beaches and great restaurants and now the big mall at Co-op City.”
Lisa Lonuzzi, of Corcoran, who’s been selling homes in Staten Island for 15 years, is seeing a surge in interest, putting five deals there into contract in just two weeks.
“I feel the energy,” she said. “It’s definitely a market where I feel like there are going to be a lot of changes for the better.”
This three-bedroom home at 225 Potter Ave. in Staten Island recently sold for $605,000. A bidding war bumped up the price over the ask by $26,000 within three days of being listed, said Corcoran's Lonuzzi.
Most of her new buyers are coming from Brooklyn. They’re coming just across the bridge from Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights, but also from Park Slope, Red Hook, Windsor Terrace and Fort Greene in search of more space, parking and affordability.
While they’re looking all over the borough, many are interested in places with “character,” Lonuzzi noted, and have been especially interested in the historic homes of Stapleton Heights.
Because of their significantly lower prices and smaller markets, however, the total volume in sales translated to $374 million worth of transactions in the Bronx and $527 million in Staten Island.
That still paled in comparison to the $5.69 billion worth of transactions in Manhattan, $2.27 billion in Brooklyn and $1.9 billion in Queens, where average prices were $504,000.
The Bronx area covering City Island, Pelham Bay and Throgs Neck saw the borough’s largest uptick in one- to three-family homes sales, jumping 39 percent from the year before, according to REBNY.
Average sales prices in these neighborhoods jumped 5 percent to $457,000.
The Queens neighborhoods of Richmond Hill, South Ozone Park and Woodhaven had the biggest increase of one- to three-family homes for that borough, up 23 percent.
In Brooklyn, Bushwick saw the biggest increase in prices of one- to three-family homes, up 33 percent to $912,000. But with the rising prices, the neighborhood also saw a sharp decline in the number of sales with 74 in the first quarter, down from 106 the year before, which was about a 30 percent drop.
The number of condo sales were up in Manhattan’s Murray Hill (a 38 percent increase to 62), Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant (up 33 percent to 33) and Queens’ Astoria (up 107 percent to 29).
