Brooklyn far outpaces Manhattan in new condo filings: PincusCo analysis

By Atticus O’Brien-Pappalardo

Brooklyn condominium development is off to a strong start in 2021 compared with the rest of the city, with plans submitted for over 650 residential units in the borough in the first quarter. During the same period there were only 123 in Manhattan.

As New York City’s condominium market attempts to rebound from a year in which the Covid-19 pandemic slowed sales and temporarily halted construction, developers see Brooklyn as a more desirable location for their new projects, as indicated by far more units and projects filed in the borough than in Manhattan.

Andrew Appell of Compass, who is representing the sales and marketing for The Narrows Condominium, an 80-foot tall, eight-story, 40-unit, 39,777-square-foot condo at 9956 3rd Avenue in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, spoke to PincusCo about the current appeal of the borough.

Appell said many factors, such as land prices, Covid-19, increase in popularity, and construction costs, have led to “a relatively dramatic shift to developing and subsequent rapid absorption in Brooklyn right now.”

Appell also noted that Brooklyn was “increasing in popularity and demand pre-pandemic anyway” but Covid-19 “further catalyzed a rapidly growing appetite for buyers looking for more space and value while also looking to leave the crowds, larger buildings, and overall hustle and bustle.”

In the first quarter of 2021, 46 condominium plans were submitted in Brooklyn with a total of 652 residential units. Meanwhile, only eight plans were submitted in Manhattan with a total of 123 residential units. Eight plans with 219 residential units were submitted in Queens.

To provide context for the gap in residential units filed for in the boroughs, PincusCo looked at 560 condominium plans submitted with the New York State Attorney General in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens since the start of 2019.

Over the nine quarter span, this was the first quarter where there was a differential of 80 percent or more residential units submitted in condominium plans between Manhattan and Brooklyn. The next biggest differential was Q3 of 2020, where plans were submitted for 485 residential units in Brooklyn, 62 percent more than were submitted in Manhattan, where developers submitted plans for 184 residential units.

To ensure the data was as accurate as possible, PincusCo supplemented the NYS AG plans with data from the New York City Department of Buildings, comparing residential unit counts by linking the BBLs of the plans. Cooperative filings, such as the privatizations submitted for the complex at 400 Second Avenue and 311 East 23rd Street, were not included in the analysis.

PincusCo also used several industry publications to confirm certain buildings’s unit counts, such as JDS Development Group’s supertall at 9 DeKalb Avenue, which has a mix of condos and rentals.

From Q1 of 2019 through Q4 of 2020, on average, one of the two boroughs had condominium plans submitted for 31 percent more residential units than the other borough, so the 81 percent gap in Q1 of 2021 is quite significant. And through the first month of Q2, it seems as though this trend is continuing.

It is quite common for there to be more condo projects submitted in Brooklyn than Manhattan. In fact, in every quarter since the start of 2019 that has been the case. With that being said, larger projects tend to be filed in Manhattan, which causes the residential unit counts to remain somewhat close.

For example, in Q4 of 2020, only four condominium plans were submitted in Manhattan, as opposed to 32 in Brooklyn. Those four Manhattan plans called for 233 residential units however, while the Brooklyn plans combined totaled only 150.

The flurry of first quarter condominium plans in Brooklyn included Guan Yu Li’s plans for a 146-unit condominium, known as Dycker Gardens condominium, at 1238 63rd Street in Borough Park. The condominium plans, CD210033, had an initial sellout price of $146,505,000 with the NYS AG and was the largest plan of the quarter.

Other significant filings were Loketch Group and Meral Property Group’s $66.96 million plans to convert a former factory building at 10 Quincy Street in Bed-Stuy to a condo with 46 residential units and Largo Investments $54.94 million plans for a condo at 215 North 10th Street in Williamsburg with 31 residential units and two commercial units.

Churchill Real Estate Holdings’ $104.2 million plan for a condo with 60 residential units at 517-523 West 29th Street in Chelsea was the largest condominium plan submitted in Manhattan in the first quarter.