QUEENS — Ridgewood is quickly becoming a hotspot for hipsters looking for deals.
Real-estate analytics site NeighborhoodX delved into June’s market-rate listings of homes for sales in Ridgewood, finding the current average listing price was $474 per square foot.
The listings ranged from a $1.15 million nine-bedroom, three-family home with parking for five at 53-48 Metropolitan Ave. — which costs about $344 per foot — to a two-bedroom condo, plus windowed office and parking spot, listed for $565,000 at 1674 Norman St., which translates to $600 a foot.
The neighborhood began its upswing in earnest when M train service expanded a couple of years ago, and as Halstead's Christian Wittmann noted his listing at 1674 Norman St. won't be hurt too much by a possible L train shutdown: even though that line is a block away, the M train is only a 10-minute walk.
Ridgewood is now a haven for summer drinking at its beer gardens like Nowadays (opened by the DJs who started the popular Mister Saturday Night and Mister Sunday dance parties along with the owner Nolita’s Botanica Bar) and Bierleichen (a German restaurant and beer garden with a heavy metal soundtrack). And true to the neighborhood’s beer-making roots, it has the new Bridge and Tunnel Brewery and the Queens Brewery.
Other trendy spots include the music venue Trans-Pecos and Houdini Kitchen Laboratory, serving upscale pizza in an industrial chic space with a large outdoor patio.
The neighborhood also has a sprawling forest with a bird sanctuary that's home to Red-Shouldered Hawks, Warbler Waves, and Short-eared Owls, along with the remains of three reservoirs that used to provide water for Brooklyn.
And though the Ridgewood Reservoir in Highland Park is on the border of Bushwick, the neighborhood is very much part of the multi-cultural world of Queens — an added benefit for those who are over the Brooklyn hype and the increasing prices that go with Brooklyn’s newfound international reputation.
Many young families and artists from Greenpoint, Williamsburg and Buswhick, as well as Bedford-Stuyvesant, Fort Greene and even Lower Manhattan, many experts say.
“The question people are asking now is: 'Am I moving to the suburbs or am I moving to Ridgewood?'” said David Kazemi, a broker with BOND New York, who noted that homes in “prime” Bushwick are now commanding $1,000 a foot while less prime spots are going for $700 a foot.
Kazemi himself bought a two-bedroom condo as an investment property in Ridgewood earlier this year for $425,000, which amounted to about $590 a square foot.“Where do you get a two-bedroom for about $400,000? We just felt like it was a good opportunity,” he said.
The facade of 1674 Norman St. Courtesy of Halstead.
Wittmann's Norman St. property already attracted multiple offers after two weeks on the market, just as another property he recently sold, a one-bedroom at the former Ridgewood Times newspaper headquarters.
As an indication that prices might be edging higher, it sold last month for $795,000 — which was $25,000 over the asking price and a record $765 per foot, Wittmann noted.
