We all know that Brooklyn has been getting more expensive for years. You can use ridiculous attempts to make new neighborhoods, dubious development plans or hard data to support your claims. But just saying “things are more expensive” doesn’t always have the same shock value as pointing out exactly how much more expensive things have gotten. Real estate blog Property Shark took a look at the increase in home prices in Brooklyn since 2004 to find out just how much things have spiked. Unsurprisingly, Williamsburg came out on top with an astounding 174% increase in the price of a home per square foot.
The number two and three neighborhoods were Prospect Lefferts Gardens and Gowanus. Keep in mind that this map wasn’t studying what the most expensive neighborhoods in the borough were, just how much more expensive they’ve gotten since 2004. So while Williamsburg saw the ridiculous leap from $269 per square foot in 2004 to $736 in 2012, Prospect Lefferts Garden’s leap of 63% only meant an increase from $235 to $382 per square foot.
Still, there are neighborhoods you can still gentrify with your pop-up espresso shop, where home prices remained stable or even dipped in the last eight years. Red Hook and Bed-Stuy stayed pretty stable, with Red Hook prices going up by merely 10% and Bed-Stuy actually dropping 2%. Cypress Hills, East Flatbush and Flatbush all saw their property values sink. Still, Property Shark points out that Flatbush is primed for a real estate boom given its Victorian real estate, influx of white residents and locals defending their turf with barbed wire-wrapped bats. OK, so I made up that last one.