By Dennis Holt
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

BROOKLYN — The building of a new Brooklyn continues, mostly with places for people to live. Because of the sagging economy, folks looking for living space are beginning to concentrate on renting rather that buying.

Thanks to Ideal Properties Group LLC, a Brooklyn-based firm, we know a lot about these new renters. This firm has issued a statistical report on who is renting where in the downtown communities, including Park Slope and Windsor Terrace.

Here is a profile of a kind of person who moved into one of nine communities in the first quarter of this year. (Those communities are Boerum Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Carroll Gardens, Clinton Hill, Cobble Hill, Prospect Heights, Park Slope and Windsor Terrace.)

That typical tenant is 21 to 25 years old, is one half of a couple (roommate or family), has lived in Brooklyn before, works freelance in an entertainment- or arts-related industry, makes $50,000 a year and needs no guarantor to be approved for an apartment.

(Other demographic reports have shown over the years that renters tend to be younger than buyers, for obvious reasons, which helps to explain the relative youth of this profile.)

Perhaps the most surprising result of this report is the shift in where people are coming from. New renters have usually been from Manhattan, but that is changing. In the first quarter of 2006, 53 percent of the renters came from Manhattan, but that dropped to 20 percent in the first quarter of 2007 and edged up to only 24 percent in this past first quarter.

People already living in Brooklyn constituted 61 percent of the new renters in the first quarter of this year.

Youth was busting out all over in that quarter — 93 percent of those renting then were from 21 to 35 years old, and 42 percent of the total were between 21 and 25.

Fully 80 percent of those renting were couples or roommates. This shot up from the 56 percent who rented in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Occupations of renters will tend to vary from quarter to quarter, and it will take time before we have enough numbers for statistical significance.

But in this past first quarter, 33 percent of the newcomers were in the entertainment business, 24 percent in art, design and architecture, 10 percent in legal work, 9 percent in advertising, media and public relations, and 7 percent in sales.

This heavy tilt toward the creative arts (57 percent, and 31 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007) reflects the strong migration of this population to Brooklyn over the past few years.

In terms of the gender of those renting in the first quarter, it was about an even split, with 51 percent male and 49 percent female.

Where are people looking to rent among the brownstone neighborhoods? For three years, the leader has been Park Slope. (This is partially because of its sheer size — there will be more rental opportunities.)

For the past three years, the numbers of inquiries in Park Slope were 48 percent of the total in 2006, 42 percent in 2007 and 39 percent this year. If you lump Fort Greene and Clinton Hill together, the trend lines for them are shooting up from 15 percent in 2006 to 31 percent in 2007 to 40 percent this year. And the statistical significance of rentals versus buyers in Brooklyn is increasing. Developers are beginning to shift offerings from condos to rentals. The number is telling: there have been 30,000 from condos conversions to rentals approved by the state attorney’s general office since 2002.

Known conversions from condos to rentals are taking place in DUMBO, Williamsburg, Bed-Stuy and downtown. Two Trees Management, for example, converted the last 40 of 300 units to rentals at 110 Livingston Street and rented them all out in three months.

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