Q3 '08 Market Report: Brooklyn Buyers Market!

Some shocking news from a real estate appraisal firm called HMS Associates landed in our inbox earlier: the average Brooklyn home price dropped 2 percent to $695,285 in the third quarter of 2008 from $708,457 in 2007. (Brownstoner also got this report.) Quoth the firm's executive VP: "It has become a buyer’s market, with more inventory out there and sellers being forced to bring prices down to get property to move...the market right now favors the buyer.” No? Really? And, another one of those statistics that will have developers ordering their administrative assistants to buy every bottle of Imodium at CVS: the number of Brooklyn properties sold rose from 988 to 999. This could be the biggest bowel loosener since the Ex-Lax Black Forest Cake thanks to the thousands of units coming on the market in coming quarters. The two percent price drop in Brooklyn in the third quarter compares with an eight percent rise in the second quarter ’08 and a three percent increase in the first quarter of this year. Prices were up in Brooklyn Heights and Prospect Heights but down in Sheepshead Bay, Greenpoint, and Park Slope. Curbed has learned that Robert Toll has absolutely not ordered the biggest toilet in human history, called The Permanent Throne from American Standard, for his office.
· HMS Associates [hmsassociates.net]For more stories from Curbed, go to curbed.com.