Thanks to the collapse on Wall Street, the Brooklyn sales market took a dip, but not a dive, according to a third quarter market report from real estate consulting firm HMS Associates. The third quarter average sales price of $695,285 marked a 2 percent reduction from the third quarter of 2007, creating a modestly improved market for buyers that could only turn more advantageous as the financial crisis reverberates.

Quarterly sales prices jumped annually in chi-chi neighborhoods like Brooklyn Heights and Prospect Heights, but fell in far away Sheepshead Bay and the emerging neighborhood of Greenpoint, suggesting a flight toward quality properties in an uncertain market. In the third quarter, sales increased by a meager 1 percent on the year, climbing from 988 last year to 999 this quarter. Home sales were up in Carroll Gardens and Williamsburg, but down Greenpoint and Fort Greene.  read more »

From the Wall Street Journal: "When all else fails, there's always faith to fall back on. Toren is the name of a shiny new condo going up in Brooklyn, N.Y., due for completion early next year. Recognizing that this is not exactly the most propitious time to be selling new apartments, the advertising slogan offers a masterclass in trying to turn adversity into opportunity: 'Believe. Now is the time to buy.' Amen. And good luck."

The gentrifying core of Bushwick occupies only a few blocks, and for Rabbi Menachem Heller, 29, herein lies the problem.

As an emissary of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, a branch of Hasidic Judaism that emphasizes outreach to less observant Jews, Rabbi Heller wants good access to the hipster arrivistes. Unfortunately, his current spot is too far away from the few hangouts – a health food store, a coffee shop, an artists’ studio space, a bar or two – to get noticed.

Mr. Heller moved to the neighborhood three years ago, after hearing from a couple of relatives, Chabad emissaries in burgeoning North Williamsburg, that people were leaving their neighborhood for Bushwick, seeking cheaper rents.  read more »

From Brownstoner: "Talk about a trophy property. 88 Remsen Street, in Brooklyn Heights, sold for $10,800,000, nosing out 140 Columbia Heights—which went for $10.75M in '06—as the most expensive house sale ever reported in Brooklyn Heights, and one of the priciest residential properties ever to change hands in the borough."

Jonathan Miller has posted the rather grim Douglas Elliman-Miller Samuel third-quarter housing report--sales down, prices down, condo sales really down. PDF here.

Brooklyn home sales plummeted 38.2 percent annually in the third quarter to 2,298, according to a new report from brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman and appraisal firm Miller Samuel. Condo sales dropped especially sharply year over year.

The Miller Samuel numbers cover closed deals in the three months ending Sept. 30, so the fallout from the Wall Street crisis of mid-September isn't immediately reflected. Still, the steep drops, a continuation of the reality on the Brooklyn ground from the summer, offer clues to that market going forward: fewer sales and falling prices.

Condo sales fell by 32.6 percent annually in the third quarter to 660, while the median sales price for a Brooklyn condo fell 4.  read more »

An upstart innkeeper on trendy Smith Street is facing off with transit officials over the decision to put a bus stop right in front of his hotel's entrance.

Bertrand Nelson, general manager of Hersha Hospitality Trust's newly opened Nu Hotel, tells The Brooklyn Paper that his lobby is filling up with bus fumes and that bus riders are fouling up the hotel's restrooms.

“It’s a weird place for a bus stop,” [Downtown Brooklyn Partnership President Joe] Chan told The Brooklyn Paper at the Nu Hotel’s opening party last month. “For a guest’s first experience [to be] inhaling a bunch of bus fumes — it’s less than an ideal way for them to experience a morning in Downtown Brooklyn.  read more »

From The Real Deal:

The number of incoming Brooklyn home hunters from outside of New York State increased over previous quarters, according to a third-quarter Downtown Brooklyn report looking at prospective renters.

More would-be renters were looking to move to Brooklyn from out of state in the third quarter than in previous quarters. ... Twenty-six percent of Brooklyn apartment hunters in the third quarter were from out of state, compared to 20 percent in the second quarter.

"Do you hear the crickets?," asked Ali Jafri, a broker for Prudential Douglas Elliman. We were standing on the ninth-floor balcony of a brand-new three-bedroom condominium for sale at 20 Bayard Street in Williamsburg. "That's something you won't get in Manhattan."

These days, Mr. Jafri might hear crickets more often than he'd like. It was the Sunday before the European markets began to tumble, during peak open house hours, and the buyer traffic through Brooklyn's newer towers was slow. Just a few days earlier, The New York Times had declared that "the credit crisis and the turmoil on Wall Street are bringing New York's real estate boom to an end.  read more »

Behind the sagging wire fence, all that's left of 55 Eckford Street in Greenpoint is a skeleton, its steel ribs turned rusty from months of rain. A tangle of weeds has shot up among the bottles and soggy cardboard covering the ground, and blue construction tarp flaps in the autumn wind. The place smells faintly of urine.

Is this the future of McCarren Park's shiny new condo expansion?

Not yet. But if New York's real estate boom died on Oct. 1, as The New York Times declared, then these deserted developments are its ghosts, projects left over from a more hopeful time.  read more »