East New York, Bushwick are 2017’s hottest neighborhoods: Survey

In December, StreetEasy declared Kingsbridge in the South Bronx to be 2017’s hottest neighborhood based on price analysis. This month, another dark horse appears as a contender for the most sought-after neighborhood among survey-takers: East New York.

The channel-facing area is one of Brooklyn’s grittiest, most crime-ridden neighborhoods and is bordered by the arguably equally dangerous Brownsville and Bedford-Stuyvesant. Nevertheless, a PropertyShark survey indicated that brokers and buyers are keenly interested in East New York, as well as Bushwick, the Lower East Side and the Upper East Side.

On PropertyShark’s chart“Real Estate Pros Choose NYC’s Hottest Neighborhoods 2017,” both East New York and Bushwick are at the top, each with 11 percent of respondents predicting them to be the hottest.

Buyers see East New York as a transit-rich area where affordable housing development is already underway, but many affordable properties are still available. Its median sales price for properties in 2016 was $339,275 — less than half of the median sales price in Bed Stuy.

Driving interest to Brooklyn’s eastern limits is a major rezoning plan passed last April called the East New York Neighborhood Plan. Mayor Bill de Blasio’s five-borough affordable housing initiative provided $267 million for affordable housing and other construction in East New York. The rezoning allows developers to build taller buildings in exchange for a certain number of below market rate apartments.

At the city-owned Dinsmore-Chestnut site will be thousands of housing units, a jobs center, a 1,000 seat public school and a multipurpose community center.

“Dinsmore-Chestnut has been vacant for decades: a tragic and all-too familiar symbol of previously unfulfilled promises and a lack of investment in East New York,” Council Member Rafael Espinal said.