Smaller Properties Dominate Apartment Building Sales, Report Says

The trading of smaller apartment buildings in Brooklyn and Queens stood out in an otherwise lackluster first quarter for New York City apartment building sales, according to a new report from research site PropertyShark.

The report tracked apartment buildings that are at least two-family, as well as mixed-use buildings.

The citywide numbers:

• The number of closings for these sales was down 41.4 percent from the first quarter of 2007.
• The median price per square foot was down 5.7 percent annually, setting a two-year low of $242.
• The median sales price was down slightly from the same time last year to $625,000.
• Each borough experienced an annual decline in sales, with Manhattan's the steepest. Sales closings in that borough dropped 49 percent from the first quarter of 2007.

Specifically, according to the report, two- and three-family apartment buildings represented over two-thirds of all multi-family apartment building closings in the city in the first quarter. Most of these were in Brooklyn and Queens.

There were 1,495 two- and three-family closings in Brooklyn in the first quarter; and 1,614 in Queens.

The full report can be found here.