Bay Ridge

Bidding wars for Bay Ridge homes

Eye on Real Estate: Here's the 411 on Bay Ridge home-sales pricing trends

June 7, 2017 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Melissa Leifer and Jerry Gemignani of Keller Williams' Tribeca office talk about Bay Ridge home-sales pricing trends. Eagle photos by Lore Croghan
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Bidding wars.

Now there’s a phrase that gladdens the hearts of home sellers — and they’re hearing it a lot in Bay Ridge.

These days, there’s almost always a bidding war when attached houses with asking prices of less than $1 million hit the market there, Melissa Leifer, an agent at Keller Williams’ Tribeca office who sells homes in the southwest Brooklyn waterfront neighborhood, told the Brooklyn Eagle.

By the time the bidding is over, the sale prices of these houses are more than $1 million.

Take 425 76th St., for instance. Leifer had the listing. In five days, there were 12 offers for the house, whose asking price was $950,000, she said.

City Finance Department records identify the buyers as Sarah D. Bunting and Dan Patrick Brady. They paid $1.1 million. The deal closed in April. The sellers, Thomas C. Riley and Ellen Sandler Riley, had purchased the house for $673,000 in 2011, Finance Department records show.

Bidding wars also frequently break out for Bay Ridge two-bedroom co-ops, which are currently price-tagged at about $500,000.

“It has been very busy this year,” said Leifer, who lives in Bay Ridge.

How different price tiers stack up

The Bay Ridge home-sales market has several different price tiers.

* After co-ops and attached single-family homes, the next price tier is two-family and three-family homes. Their asking prices are $1.2 million to $1.75 million.

There are bidding wars for these homes if the asking prices are “realistic,” Leifer said.

“If the asking price is even 5 percent higher than it should be, the house sits on the market,” she said.

The prices for these homes don’t go as high when co-brokers aren’t allowed.

* The next price tier is single-family houses that need gut renovation. Their asking prices are $1.99 million to $2.3 million. Sales activity has started to pick up in this tier, she said.

* Luxury homes are in the next price tier. The asking prices are $2.8 million to $4 million.

These are single-family homes that usually have garages. They are built on wide lots with a minimum size of 50 by 100 feet, said Jerry Gemignani, an agent at Keller Williams’ Tribeca office who handles sales in Bay Ridge with Leifer. There’s lots of greenery in the yards.

Only a few luxury homes have hit the market in Bay Ridge this year.

Selling them is a slow process that typically takes six months, give or take a bit, he said.

* Super-luxury homes are in Bay Ridge’s highest price tier. The asking prices are $4.5 million and up.

These houses are unique. Their pricing is “emotion-based,” Gemignani said — there’s no meaningful comparable-home price data to work with.

Often, these houses take years to sell, he said.

Where the buyers come from

These days, the majority of Bay Ridge homebuyers Leifer’s seeing come from outside Bay Ridge.

Windsor Terrace and Park Slope are the two neighborhoods where the highest number of Bay Ridge buyers come from.

Also, a lot of buyers of Bay Ridge homes are relocating from other states because they’ve gotten jobs here in New York. Some of these arrivals from other states are doctors and medical researchers. Often the buyers from other states are families with kids.

Many house-hunters from other states also look for homes on Long Island, where they discover the taxes are higher than they are in Brooklyn.

And there are foreign house-hunters checking out the Bay Ridge market.

“I’ve shown a lot of houses to people from Ireland and England,” Leifer said.

“You get the best of both worlds in Bay Ridge — suburban-style houses with yards, garages, driveways and sometimes swimming pools, but also subway access,” she said.

Prospective buyers of Bay Ridge luxury homes often grew up in the neighborhood, then moved away. They want to come back and raise their kids in Bay Ridge, Gemignani said.

 

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