By Sarah Trefethen
Prospect Heights is a small neighborhood with big neighbors.
Prospect Park, the Barclays Center and the Brooklyn branch of the Brooklyn public library sit on its borders, along with the Brooklyn Museum and Botanical Gardens.
And with the pressing demand for apartments driving up prices all over Brooklyn, this seemingly sleepy neighborhood is no exception.
The average listing price in the neighborhood has reach $991,077, according to the listing tracker, Trulia.com. Average price per square foot for sales in Prospect Heights in the second quarter of 2013 was $516, compared to $416 for Brooklyn overall and $761 in neighboring Park Slope.
“Basically, as soon as something hits the market, it’s in contract within days,” said Concetta Raz, a senior managing director at Citi Habitats.
Park Slope may be most famous for its legions of stroller-pushing young professionals, but recently you see more young families on the stoops and wide, tree-lined sidewalks on the eastern side of Flatbush Avenue.
In the summer, residents and visitors line up outside the door of the neighborhood’s ice cream shops.
Raz and her husband moved to Prospect Heights from Dumbo a year and a half ago, and they have since been joined by twin daughters.
They looked in a number of popular Brooklyn neighborhoods, she said, including Cobble Hill, Carrol Gardens and Park Slope, but “we found that the apartments weren’t as generously apportioned as when we went over to Prospect Heights.”
The pre-war home they chose in Prospect Heights is a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment with a full dining room.
“The housing stock in Prospect Heights is a lot different and, in my opinion, a lot better than a lot of the other neighborhoods,” Raz said.
Some of the stately residences in Prospect Heights date from the mid-1800’s. In 2009, the city created the 850-building Prospect Heights Historic District. The neighborhood’s two oldest buildings are on Carlton Avenue between St. Marks Avenue and Bergen Street, and date back to at least the 1850s, according to The Brooklyn Paper.
There is also new development, including the troubled One Grand Army Plaza, but also a number of extremely successful projects.
At 499 Dean, a renovated condominium conversion near the Barclays Center that was completed in 2010, a three-bedroom unit sold in March for $1.35 million, according to StreetEasy.com. There are also reports of a plan for a new, six-story 36-unit building on Bergen Street.
Sales listings include a few of the large, subdivided older houses that dominate the neighborhood.
A 5-story 3-family 5,355 s/f brownstone in need of renovation is listed with Douglas Elliman’s Alexander Maroni for $2.9 million. And Donwald Realty has a five-story, five-family townhouse on Park Place for $3.9 million.
Among the deals in contract in the neighborhood is a recently renovated four-bed, three-bath house on Saint Marks Avenue for $2.45 million, listed by Tracey McLean of Corcoran. The property last sold in 2006 for $902,000.
Rental listings in Prospect Heights on StreetEasy average $2,675, with a two-bedroom loft on Dean Street listed with Corcoran’s Andrew Mapp asking $6,500 per month.
The least expensive offering to show up in a search was $1,550 per month for a one-bedroom apartment with a tiny bedroom on Park Place, listed by Daniel Ortiz of Sapphire Property Group.
Raz said the rental listings are more rare than you would expect in an neighborhood of so many two- and three-family homes.
“People don’t move out,” she said.
