The Avalon Fort Greene is one of many high-rise luxury buildings in Brooklyn. (Cristabelle Tumola / The Brooklyn Ink)

From Woody Allen to “Sex and the City,” film and television have glamorized living in Manhattan. And for years, if you could afford it, Manhattan was the only place in the city to live. In a 2004 “Sex and the City” episode, one of the main characters decides to move to Brooklyn with her family for more space. This choice is portrayed as a great sacrifice. As she recalls all of her horrible Manhattan apartments, she wonders, half-jokingly:

“Why do I think living in Manhattan is so fantastic?”

“Because it is,” says her friend.

But the notion that Brooklyn living is only for bargain hunters is gone. Although Manhattan rents overall are still more expensive, in the last few years more areas of Brooklyn have began to catch up. Expensive Brooklyn areas, such as DUMBO and Williamsburg, are now comparable to rents in several Manhattan neighborhoods. And more people are choosing Brooklyn for its lifestyle than its rents.

“You see people going there because they want to actually live there,” says Andrew Barrocas, CEO of the real estate company MNS, “and they are willing to pay a premium in order to do it.”

Related: Why Brooklyn Foreclosure Numbers Could Get Worse

In January, the average Manhattan rental prices for studios, one bedrooms and two bedrooms in doorman and non-doorman buildings exceeded those in Brooklyn. But the priciest Brooklyn areas were comparable to, and even more expensive than some Manhattan neighborhoods, according to MNS’s January 2012 Market Reports, the only research on the city’s rental rates published on a monthly basis.

For example, the average one bedroom rental price in DUMBO was $3,584. The average one bedroom on the Upper East Side was $ 3,466 for doorman buildings and $2,562 for non-doorman. (More Brooklyn and Manhattan rental comparisons)

Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill are also neighborhoods that have comparable price points to Manhattan, says Samantha Behringer, a Prudential Douglas Elliman Associate Broker who handles sales and rentals in Manhattan and Brooklyn. In Williamsburg average rentals prices were $2,398 for studios, $2,960 for one bedrooms and $3,776 for two bedrooms, according to the MNS report.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights and DUMBO have been comparable with Manhattan for the last three to four years. And in the last two years Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill have accelerated in price, she says. In Boerum Hill one bedrooms went from $2,170 in January 2011 to $2,750 a year later, an increase of about 27 percent.

In Manhattan neighborhoods, such as Harlem, certain areas of the Financial District, Northern Manhattan and Midtown West, a renter can find a comparable or even cheaper apartment. Of those places, Harlem is probably the best known for affordable apartments, and was by far the lowest priced area in the MNS January report. Doorman building rents were $1,433 for studios, $2,023 for one bedrooms and $ 3,300 for two bedrooms. In non-doorman buildings studios were $1,398, one bedrooms were $1,793 and two bedrooms were $2,218.

But the far Upper East Side, typically east of Third Avenue, is another neighborhood that is a great choice for renters, says Behringer. Though it’s not as economical as Harlem, it’s one of the lowest priced areas in Manhattan. Many students live there, so there’s plenty of inventory and a large turnover, which slows down the market somewhat.

If you’re living in a more expensive Manhattan neighborhood like Chelsea, says Behringer, “a great option is to go a little further up and a little bit further east. That tends to be the trend.”

A mason working on the roofline of a condominium and townhouse development in 2008. Today, the neighborhood is one of the most expensive in Brooklyn. (AP)

But Behringer likes Brooklyn. She has lived in Fort Greene since 1997. “People thought I was a little bit out of my mind,” she says. It was a rough neighborhood when she first moved there, but she knew from working in real estate that the area had potential and would see future growth because it was so close to the city.

She was right. And in the last three years Fort Greene has become very expensive, says Behringer. “You can’t find a one bedroom here for under $2,000,” she says. “That’s not a bargain to me.”

Brooklyn’s best selling point is no longer affordable rents.

As pioneers like Behringer came over to Brooklyn, businesses followed, expanding the shopping and entertainment options. Today this growth continues, and is characterized more by independent business rather than chain stores.

People come for the residential feel that Brooklyn’s always had, and is lacking in most of Manhattan, but now there are more amenities. Behringer never hears people say they want to move back to Manhattan, and many want to stay in Brooklyn long term.

When Barrocas started in the real estate business 12 years ago, he used to encounter people that weren’t familiar with Brooklyn and didn’t know how close it was to jobs and life in Manhattan, but its proximity no longer seems to be an issue.

Convenience to Manhattan is an important factor in rental prices. But Williamsburg and Downtown Brooklyn have also benefited from the development of high-rise luxury buildings. These areas have fewer height restrictions, and there’s been a lot of development to meet demand, particularly in Williamsburg.

“It’s certainly, if not the fastest, one of the fastest growing neighborhoods that I’ve ever been involved with in the last 10 years,” says Barrocas.

In Williamsburg, the rental inventory consists of many condominiums that were bought as rental investments, says Behringer. And owners can charge a premium for them.

Rent only buildings are also being developed. The development company Avalon Bay already has a high-rise luxury building in Fort Greene, and is opening one on Willoughby Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn that will have about 800 units, says Behringer. People are willing to pay a lot for these amenity-packed Brooklyn buildings, and are quickly filling up the units.

Renters priced out of Williamsburg are now going to more affordable neighborhoods such as Bushwick, Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights, says Barrocas. 

For now Prospect Heights and Clinton Hill remain on the cusp of the more popular neighborhoods, says Behringer. But those places won’t stay on the edge for long, she says, and others, such as Bed-Stuy, could see a real turnaround in a couple years.

What You Can Get for $2,000 in Brooklyn and Manhattan

Brooklyn’s priciest neighborhoods are now on par with some of Manhattan’s neighborhood deals. All monthly rents are from January 2012. (Source: MNS Real Estate)

Moses Fried's unoccupied building in Bedford-Stuyvesant. (Keldy Ortiz / The Brooklyn Ink)

The Lefferts Hotel in Bedford-Stuyvesant was built as a pleasant place for guests to rest. There are no guests today, and it is hardly pleasant. The five story Lefferts building sits vacant and dreary, chains wrapped around its door handles.

The building’s history has been troubled in recent years. In 2006, the New York Sun reported that police were investigating prostitution there. The building owner, Moses Fried, told the newspaper at the time, “I’m a Jewish religious man. I would never permit to run prostitution there.”

No charges were filed and the hotel remained open, only to be closed in March 2010 by the Building Department because of unpaid building violations. According to department records, 127 Lefferts alone has accumulated $90,500 in unpaid fines since 2006. Most of the violations grow out of 125 and 127 Lefferts Place having been combined into one building “60 years ago,” Fried said, leaving insufficient “fire separation” under current codes.

And so it is that the neighborhood is now left with an empty building with signs on its roof and its side advertising for a hotel that is not taking in guests.

“It’s an eyesore now, the fact that it’s closed,” said three-year resident John Martinez, who lives on the same street as the closed building. “Ideally, [the building owner] would give up the home, and let someone fix it.”

The Lefferts is just one of scores of empty buildings in Bed-Stuy. Kendall Jackman, a homeless advocate involved in a citywide land-use study that is soon to be released,  said that the neighborhood “has the highest density per square mile of vacant property buildings and lots” in the city.

Such buildings are like a plague on a community. They run down surrounding property values by being unattractive and making the neighborhood feel dangerous.

Some are foreclosed homes awaiting buyers, a result of the ongoing real estate crisis. But others are the result of a more controversial practice called “warehousing,” in which the owners are merely sitting on the property, waiting, usually for years, for an opportunistic sale at a steep price when someone really needs or wants the property.

Fried said that that he is not warehousing the Lefferts Hotel. “I am trying to open the building as soon as possible,” he said. “I’m losing a lot of money to keep that building that way, but the city does not want to let me open it up. The city is still giving me violations worth thousands of dollars while the building is closed.”

An unoccupied building on Lefferts Place. (Keldy Ortiz / The Brooklyn Ink)

The city usually requires that all violations are paid up before it will give a permit to do almost any improvement on a building, or to rent or sell it.  Landlords faced with high fines or back taxes often sell buildings precisely because they need the income to pay up before the city seizes the building.

According to building department records reviewed by The Brooklyn Ink, the uninhabited building of 127 Lefferts Place has received 16 violations since 2009. Fried, nonetheless, insists that he intends to fix the building.

Derrick Catley, an 11-year resident of Bed-Stuy, stared up at the Lefferts from his nearby brownstone on a recent day. “I can’t imagine this building sitting there not (generating) money,” he said. “Why should it stay vacant?”

Exact numbers of vacant buildings and lots are hard to come by, but Jackman’s advocacy group, Picture The Homeless, plans in January to release a study it has done of the five boroughs. She said that the study will pinpoint places and numbers. The group’s interest is to find more housing for the city’s homeless.

Many factors have contributed to warehousing. One is that New York’s rent laws strongly protect the renter, even when they don’t pay the rent. The amount of rent a landlord can charge is also often regulated. Some of the oldest buildings are subject to stringent rent control laws, while many of those built between February 1947 and January 1974 come under more flexible but still limiting rent stabilization. The rent on many New York City apartments is thus less than market prices.

Specializing in tenant and landlord court disputes, attorney Serge Joseph said owners often just do not want to deal with tenants as a result. “Some landlords do not want to be restricted,” he said. A building owner can just decide to pay taxes and avoid the tenant headache, he said.

But sitting outside his home just a few feet from the empty building, 14-year resident Jimmy Holloman said that someone should live there. “It would be nice if the house is rented out to the homeless or something,” said Holloman. “It’s [in] a nice neighborhood.”

Bedford-Stuyvesant has been growing and gentrifying as new residents have been pouring into the neighborhood for more than five years running. “It’s an up and coming area,” said real estate agent Rosetta Allen, who has been selling buildings in the community for 16 years. “Before people wanted to be away from Bed-Stuy, but now there is more of a desire to be in Bed-Stuy.”

Property values in the area have ballooned with the demand.  According to various real estate websites, recent values of homes in the area range from $500,000 to upwards of $3 million.

This run down building on Fulton Street remains empty. (Keldy Ortiz / The Brooklyn Ink)

To Allen, it’s difficult to understand why owners let buildings like the Lefferts sit empty. “I don’t see why,” she said. “They don’t make any money just having it there. They are hoping that the value goes up, but the problem is that when it goes up, there will not be any buyers” because people will would have found other places, she added.

Michael Slattery, senior vice president of the Real Estate Board of New York, however, believes the opposite. Slattery said that an owner “can hold it as an asset.”

But that’s not to say that he opposes the idea of trying to make money by occupying and renting the building. “If you have a place that can generate some income and bring some tenants, it’s better,” he said. “It’s better to make some money than not.”

The city does provide enticing incentives for owners. Through the Department of Housing and Preservation exists the Housing Asset Renewal Program (HARP), which focuses on converting vacant buildings into affordable housing.

Then there is Habitat for Humanity NYC, which buys properties and places families from the neighborhood into those homes. The problem executive director Josh Lockwood says he faces is that “the owner is resistant” to sell to him. Lockwood’s response: “You can hope that property values will come back. But, it might be that this recession drags out. By selling this building, they take the risk out of the equation.”

An extreme measure to free property can be through eminent domain, said Tom Angotti, a former city planner, and currently chairman of Hunter College Center of Communities, Development and Planning. However, he said that Bedford Stuyvesant is “not on a high scale” when it comes to real estate.

Until then, Jackman hopes that once elected officials are made aware of the number of vacant properties in Bedford-Stuyvesant, they will force owners to up warehoused buildings. As a homeless person herself, and currently living in a shelter, she hopes that the city can provide homes to those who need them.

“There’s enough housing that there doesn’t need to be a homeless shelter,” said Jackman.

The historic value and aesthetic appeal of brownstone row houses contribute to Park Slope’s steep apartment rental and home sales prices. (Maane Khatchatourian / The Brooklyn Ink)

Dotted with brownstones and 19th century Romanesque mansions, Park Slope houses evoke the urban landscape of 1950s Brooklyn, but boast a modern-day price tag.

The median sales price of homes has increased 41.7 percent from the same quarter last year and escalated by 19.3 percent over the last five years, according to trulia.com — a residential real estate search engine that tracks market trends. A home that cost $300,000 10 years ago sells for $1.3 million today.

Additionally, Park Slope houses cost 145.28 percent more than the median sales price in the general Brooklyn area.

Judith Lief, a senior vice president and associate broker for Warren Lewis Realty, said this year’s market was “healthy and active” in February and March, sluggish in June and July and currently marked by a “flurry of activity.”

Lief said the housing market in Park Slope was growing upwards of 15 percent annually before the 2007 recession. Prices dropped five to 10 percent overall, she said.

“We were one of the last neighborhoods to be hit,” Lief said. “The neighborhood came to a halt in terms of sales. Everyone panicked; they were worried about savings, bonuses. It’s also my perception that we were among the first neighborhoods to rebound.”

Median home sales prices dipped to $750,000 in 2008, spiked in 2009 and slumped again to almost $800,000 in 2010, according to trulia. The prices began increasing steadily in late 2010.

Agent Debbie Fuka of Aguayo & Huebener said Park Slope’s real estate sector fared better than other neighborhoods after the crash.

“There was a slight slowdown in sales, but it didn’t really affect it so much because people still want to move here and are still building new constructions,” she said.

The rental market has experienced the same upward surge. One and two-bedrooms rent for $2,200 and $2,900, respectively.

“The rentals are a little bit more in Park Slope [compared to other neighborhoods in Brooklyn] because of the school system,” Fuka said. “Once you put an apartment on the market, it’s rented immediately. In Prospect Park, it’s probably $300 to $400 less for apartments.”

This reflects a borough-wide trend as home sales in Brooklyn climbed 18 percent in the third quarter of 2011, according to a joint report filed by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and broker Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate. They reported that 2,219 condos, co-ops and one- to three-family homes were purchased this year, compared to 1,879 in 2010. At $510,000, the median price of homes in Brooklyn also spiked by five percent from last year.

While Park Slope homes out-price those in Boerum Hill, Bedford Stuyvesant and Williamsburg, Lief said they compete with Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Brooklyn Heights.

Brooklyn Properties, like other Park Slope real estate agencies, plasters its windows with multi-million-dollar property listings. (Maane Khatchatourian / The Brooklyn Ink)

Despite the persistent growth in market prices over the years, Park Slope continues to attract residents with its open spaces, prestigious public schools and quiet alternative to a Manhattan lifestyle. Young Manhattanites have been fleeing their pricy residences for more affordable housing in Park Slope since the mid-1990s, drastically transforming the neighborhood’s real estate market and social demographics. This trend has forced residents unable to afford inflated rent prices to move to the southern part of the neighborhood.

Park Slope resident Arthur Littman, who moved to the area 30 years ago, said the neighborhood transformed in the 1960s and ‘70s from an Italian and Irish enclave to a primarily low-income African American and Hispanic district.

“The neighborhood was in decline during the late 60s, early 70s — during the economic crisis,” Littman said. “A lot of families moved to the suburbs. Those who stayed bought three-story brownstones cheaply and renovated them, selling them for much higher prices later.”

Littman bought his home for $67,000 in 1981. He suspects that the residence is now worth $1.7 million.

Three-year South Slope resident Brenda Milis, who rents a three-bedroom apartment for $3,300, said people continue to gravitate toward the area because it’s relatively cheaper than similar neighborhoods in Manhattan. Milis said Park Slope’s public school and transportation systems, as well as its parks, restaurants, novelty bookstores and clothing boutiques lure people to the area.

Moreover, Lief said Park Slope is an ideal example of the New Urbanism movement that promotes livable communities with spacious neighborhoods.

“In the suburbs, when two feet of snow fell, people couldn’t get anywhere,” she said. “You can walk under 10 minutes in any direction and get to a train. … The neighborhood is demographically diverse, politically active and has a strong Civic Association. You sit on the stoop, you know the neighbors, the merchants.”

Six-year Park Slope resident Francesca Neville said the neighborhood has retained its romantic mid-20th century spirit.

“It has reinvented itself back to the way it looked in the 40s and 50s,” Neville said.

While gentrification forced some people to move to different segments of Park Slope, Neville said it displaced others completely.

One-year South Slope resident Billy Weymer said gentrification is more threatening in other regions, including Bed Stuy. Despite its drawbacks, he said the phenomenon could also be rewarding to the population at large in terms of yielding neighborhood beautification projects.

However, 20-year resident Rita Cumming said it’s a saddening trend.

“It’s painful for me to see people coming here from Manhattan and push people away who have been living here for years,” Cumming said. “I feel a lot of guilt.”

Agent William Hendrickson of Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate said the area could become even more gentrified with time.

“I think Park Slope will continue to experience the trend that it’s had for many years to the extent that people move from Manhattan,” he said. “I think Park Slope is a special place. … This is the biggest brownstone neighborhood I think anywhere.”

A high sales volume and rising prices have made the neighborhood a stronghold in northern Brooklyn’s real estate market, while foreclosure rates well above New York City and Brooklyn averages continue to limit progress.

“Bed-Stuy is an anomaly,” said Michael Corley, executive vice president of Corley Realty Group, a brokerage agency that focuses on real estate in northern Brooklyn. “It has become the neighborhood where we get the lion’s share of business, both from regular and distressed sales.”

That reputation of exceptionality is in large part due to volume of sales. According to data from the Department of Finance available on StreetEasy.com, 178 sales were recorded in Bed-Stuy within 60 days of Nov. 3. In that same period, the contiguous neighborhoods of Crown Heights, Clinton Hill and Prospect Heights recorded a combined 179 sales.

Brownstones, such as these on Halsey Street, give Bed-Stuy's real estate market a leg up on the competition. (Photo by Shane Hunt / The Brooklyn Ink)

In the north-central area of Brooklyn, Bed-Stuy was second only to Williamsburg, which, despite its reputation as one of the hottest and most rapidly gentrifying spots in the borough, recorded just two more sales.

According to Corley, Bed-Stuy’s success is a product of its innate physical and historical attractiveness.

“A lot of that [success] has to do with the fact that no other neighborhood in New York City can match its concentration of historic brownstones,” he said. “New housing doesn’t have the craftsmanship and intrinsic value of the brownstone. So it is the actual construction–the physical character–of Bed-Stuy that is driving it as an anomaly.”

The typical brownstone townhouse—slim and tall, its facade adorned with embellishments in bas-relief, its front door raised majestically above the city streets—has long been desired  by potential home-buyers. But Bedford-Stuyvesant’s reputation as a high-crime neighborhood negated much of that attraction through the ’80s and ’90s.

There is still crime, but it is down. The neighborhood’s 79th and 81st precincts reported a combined 29 murders in 2010, compared with 120 in 1990, according to NYPD crime statistics. Rape, robbery, assault and burglary have all fallen.

“Do or Die Bed-Stuy, that was always the reputation,” said Lance Freeman, an associate professor in Columbia University’s urban planning program. “But as crime has declined across the city, the focus has shifted from the reputation to the reality of Bed-Stuy’s housing stock.”

Despite the continuing safety concerns, the veil of pervasive danger has been lifted to reveal a residential neighborhood whose most desirable blocks are lined with trees and picturesque row houses. In Brooklyn Botanical Garden’s 2011 Greenest Block in Brooklyn contest, an annual appraisal of “streetscape gardening, tree stewardship, and community development in the borough of Brooklyn,” according to competition’s website, Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Bainbridge Homeowners and Tenants Association was a second-place winner in both the residential category and the “Best Street Tree Beds” category. The neighborhood received more combined wins and honorable mentions than any other in the borough.

And so Bed-Stuy is a community teetering on the cusp of gentrification—a place where housing stock and cost meet at a rare middle ground. As Corley puts it, “people can find brownstones in Harlem, but they don’t want to pay a million dollars.”

Which brings up the matter of prices.

The immediate outlook is positive. The median sales price for homes in Bedford-Stuyvesant from July to September 2011 was $400,000, a 6.7 percent increase compared with the previous quarter, according to Trulia.com. Median sales prices in Brooklyn as a whole increased only 2.9 percent over the same period.

But the recent upswing comes within the context of a larger and grimmer narrative. The deleterious effects of the housing market’s collapse, and the Great Recession it helped to spawn, still weigh heavily on Bed-Stuy’s real estate market. Sale prices have decreased 31 percent over the past five years.

Tethered to the neighborhood’s price index—and dragging it down like a pair of cement shoes—are frequent and ubiquitous home foreclosures.

According to Realtytrac.com, which collects nationwide foreclosure data, one in every 2,339 housing units in Brooklyn received a foreclosure filing in September 2011—the second-highest proportion in the city behind Staten Island.

And Bedford-Stuyvesant owns a substantial chunk of the foreclosure market. Four hundred and eighty foreclosed homes were listed for sale in the neighborhood as of Nov. 3. Brooklyn’s 11221 ZIP code, which includes the central-eastern portion of Bed-Stuy, saw one in every 947 housing units receive a foreclosure filing in September 2011—the third-highest proportion in the borough.

“About a third of the available industry [in Bedford-Stuyvesant] has been distressed sales, focused on foreclosures,” Corley said.

That, according to Freeman, is reason to temper if not stifle optimism.

“If sales are up and prices are rising some, that’s good. But if foreclosures are keeping prices down from what they could be, to call it a positive situation would probably be too simplistic,” he said. “It’s complicated.”

These buildings on 7th street are part of the current historic district of Park Slope. (The Brooklyn Ink/Alejandro Lopez de Haro)

The historic district of Park Slope has had the highest property values in the neighborhood, and has been able to ride out the slump in housing prices in recent years. Now, the Park Slope Civic Council, a community group, is campaigning to expand the neighborhood’s historic district, which could prevent the kind of real estate speculation that led to the slump.

“The district is the center of the neighborhood and also has the best housing stock,” says Marc Garstein, 64, the president of Warren Lewis Realty Associates, an agency that has a focus on Park Slope.

Garstein believes that the advantage of this expansion is that it will further prevent what he calls “bad fit” development projects that have fed speculation and real estate bubbles, especially through the destruction of old buildings to construct new residential developments.

A historic district designation limits the amount of new construction in an area by protecting the façade and size of buildings of historic character. The Park Slope Civic Council, which began its attempt to expand the boundaries of the current Park Slope Historic District in 2007, sees the expansion as a safeguard for a neighborhood that wishes to defend its residential property values from massive speculation.

This anti-speculation premise was partially confirmed in a report by the New York City Independent Budget Office in 2003. The report concluded that prices for residential historic properties have increased at a lesser speed then for similar properties outside historic districts.

The City’s Landmark Preservation Commission (LPC) will hold a public hearing on Oct. 26 about the proposal and next year the commission is expected to rule on the first stage of the Park Slope proposal. The proposal covers a block of 545 mostly residential buildings that the Civic Council considers to be architecturally and historically significant, a process known as “landmarking.”

The Civic Council argues that the landmarking process will stabilize general property values, an issue of broad appeal in the neighborhood. “Landmarking tends to raise property values, because people want to live in neighborhoods protected from radical demolition and development,” says the Civic Council in its website.

“The responsibility of maintaining the façade of your house to historic standards, and the knowledge that you won’t be subject to a tremendous increase in the number of people living in your immediate area, are prime factors that make living in a historical district desirable,” said Michael Cairl, the president of the Park Slope Civic Council. He added that the height and bulk of residential buildings will be protected under the expansion. By limiting the amount of residential space in buildings, the value of residential properties is further protected from the perils of excessive construction.

Simeon Bankoff, executive director of the Historic Districts Council, a non-profit that advocates for the protection of historic districts in New York City, believes the historic district expansion will offer further protection from price speculation. “People can’t tear down buildings to create new developments,” said Bankoff.

The non-profit Fifth Avenue Committee, which provides low-income housing, supports the expansion. The organization does so despite the necessary outside renovations that will be required if their buildings are designated as part of the historic district. The Fifth Avenue Committee manages and owns over a dozen properties for low-income families in Park Slope.

“At times there are more expenses attached to the requirements, but there are definitely programs available to defray the costs associated with renovating property to historic standards,” said Michelle de la Uz, executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee.

The Civic Council foresees that the renovation and limits to the façades of buildings will be a main topic of discussion with businesses in Park Slope. The first stage currently being reviewed by the LPC is made up mostly of residential buildings. However, the expansion is a long-term project and later stages will include streets that have various businesses. “When you get to commercial property it is a different discussion,” says Cairl. This is because business owners are sensitive to what sort of exterior treatments they can do in their stores.

If the LPC approves the expansion of the Park Slope historic district, the new buildings will fall under their oversight. Exterior alterations will be subject to a permit process by the LPC and the department of buildings. As of now such alterations only need to be approved by the department of buildings.

The Park Slope Chamber of Commerce has yet to discuss and take a side in support or against the overall expansion project of the historic district. The Park Slope Fifth Avenue Business Improvement District also has yet to take an official stance on the project.

Garstein, the real estate agent, said he believes that a historic designation will protect the neighborhood from developers, and that property values will increase at a stable rate in the long run. But speculation, he said, will not be eliminated entirely. “If you have the money,” he said, “you can speculate whatever the price.”

Adrienne Blanks, 26, loves her chic two-bedroom apartment. The wood floors, granite tabletops and brand new Frigidaire dishwasher and refrigerator attracted her to the cozy Bedford-Stuyvesant abode. At $875 a month — $1,750 that she splits with her roommate — her building, known as the Stable House, is a bold step up from the vermin-plagued home where she lived in West New York, N.J., until she moved to Brooklyn in February.

“Sometimes I don’t want to leave because it’s so comfortable here,” Blanks said of the property that also boasts a game and reading room and laundry room. Though the apartment costs $250 more than her New Jersey digs, where she had lived since 2007, Blanks said that the amenities and security still make the apartment a great deal. “I don’t have to get a gym membership, I can just go downstairs,” she said.

But the apartment wasn’t meant for Blanks to rent. Blanks, managing director of TheBlvd.com, is just one of the many renters reeling in deals after a condo bust that has left stale condominium sales throughout the area for over a year.

Situated on Bedford and Jefferson avenues, the Stable House is like so many others in Bedford Stuyvesant — one of the neighborhoods hit hardest by foreclosures in the city. From September to November last year, the median sales price decreased by 18.4 percent and the number of sales decreased by 14.3 percent. Average price per square foot decreased by 24.1 percent, down to $161 compared to the same period last year, according to Trulia.com.

Condo sales in Brooklyn have plummeted from 979 sales during the third quarter of 2007 — a high — to 463 sales during the same period of 2009, according to data from Miller Samuel, a real estate appraisal company. The median cost of an apartment or house in February 2010 was $485,353, 14.87 percent lower than the $570,110 high of August 2007, according to Departmentofnumbers.com, which tabulates rates from New York City rolling and annual property sales.

“The condo market isn’t where their hopes were. They paid big numbers for their land during the craze, if you will,” said Michael Amirkhan, vice president of sales at Massey Knakal Realty Services, who covers Bedford Stuyvesant. Amirkhan said that several buildings in the neighborhood are now being sold as rentals, including a 15-unit project at 552 Lafayette St., at 354 Franklyn Ave. and, most notably, the Mynt building — a mammoth 72-unit complex at Myrtle and Nostrand avenues — that has become a rental property.

“Renting out the units makes a lot of sense — there is a steady stream of Manhattanites and West Coasters migrating to Brooklyn, and brand new condo projects make very desirable rental apartment,” Carlos Angelucci, chief operating officer at Rapid Realty, said in an e-mail. Many former condos are much more spacious than rental units designed to maximize bedroom count.

Justin Richardson, a transplant from Washington, D.C., looked at a duplex in Crown Heights that was originally supposed to be a condo, a refurbished brownstone featuring brand new amenities and electronic fireplaces in every room. The four-bedroom unit would have cost Richardson, 24, and his three roommates $550 each. “It was the perfect bachelor pad,” he said.

Castle Braid, an eclectic rental property, equipped with a recording studio, woodshop and yoga — welcoming to the local Bushwick arts community — was built as a condo, but the poor market persuaded its developers to rent instead. “Nobody is buying right now and some are having trouble renting,” said Taylor Clark, marketing director for the complex. Clark said that converting the space to a rental has been positive. Ninety percent of the 143 units were full in six months, he said. Condos, which are then turned to rentals, cannot legally return to condo status, so the decision to go rental is a serious one for developers. Yet Clark maintained that rentals are more profitable in the long term. “Over 20-30 years apartments make more money,” he said.

Still, renting is only an option for developers who can afford it. Some developers do not have enough flexibility with their lenders to convert to rentals.

“If you bought the wrong building at the wrong time, you may be stuck in a situation where no amount of rent is going to cover your financing,” Angelucci said. “That’s why we’ve seen so many smaller developers lose their building and their shirts.  If there’s any chance of them holding onto their project, though, they should definitely be renting those units out — some money is better than no money.”

On Willoughby Avenue in Bushwick a modern white building stands out from a line of look-alike old families houses. Number 979 is an eight-unit building of glass and cement. Large windows cover the façade that looks to the southwest. Inside, the apartments are new, furnished with modern kitchens and stairs made of steel.

979 Willoughby Ave. in Bushwick. Photo: Pirolo/Brooklyn Ink

They were ready to occupied in April 2007, but for the last two years, they have been empty. After construction, a long series of problems blocked the release of the certificate of occupancy. Last month, New York City Department of Buildings gave its final approval. The eight apartments are now officially on the market. The owner, Harold Tischler, who invested in Bushwick in 2005, remains confident that buyers will arrive quickly. But while the building awaited the certificates, the market drastically changed.

Only four years ago, Bushwick was at a turning point in its history. In December 2005, the Brooklyn Public Library held a forum entitled “Brooklyn’s Next Real Estate Hot Spot: Bushwick.” The area was rebranded as East Williamsburg, in an effort to hide a legacy of decades of crime, poverty, and decline that had begun in the 1960s. In the first years of the new millenium, the city and state began pouring resources into the neighborhood, to improve housing conditions. Between 1990 and 2006, crime dropped 72 percent.  Rents were cheaper than in Manhattan and other areas of Brooklyn. The L-line brought subway riders into the city in 20 minutes and fashionable Williamsburg was nearby. Bushwick wasn’t yet a fashionable neighborhood – the poverty rate never dropped under one third, especially in the majority Hispanic population. But after decades of neglect, the transformation into the new Brooklyn hot spot had begun.

Young residents and artists moved in. And after the hipsters, the developers arrived. During the last quarter of 2006, there were 32 sales transactions of condos, co-ops and single-family houses. This was the highest number in four years, according to the data from PropertyShark.com, a website that provides real estate professionals, investors and homebuyers with real estate information. The median sale price per square foot was $409.

It was in this period that Harold Tischler, like many others, decided to invest here. His Vintage Builders, a real estate company with 16 years of experience, moved to Bushwick after the company’s first new development in Bensonhurst. He saw an opportunity: between Willoughby and Evergreen avenues a warehouse had been empty for a decade; it was pulled down by Vintage Builders to make space for the first modern building on the street.

“I liked this site and it was cheaper than other places,” Tischler says. He believed in the area in 2005, when the work started, and he says that he still believes in it now. “Twenty years ago here you could have been killed walking on the road. In the next ten years it will be the new Williamsburg.”

But data is not so reassuring. After a peak of 23 transactions in the second quarter of 2008, the number of sales dropped to ten in each of the following quarters.  And in the first nine months of 2009 the number of transactions was 13 – five between January and March, just one between April and June, and seven from July until September. The last registered median sale price for square foot was $360, after having dropped to $229 in the second quarter, according to PropertyShark.com. But even if there is an increase, it is not consider particularly significant by Bill Staniford, chief executive officer of PropertyShark.com.

At the end of November, the Department of Buildings registered six building sites in Bushwick where construction activity has come to an abrupt halt. But according to organizations working in the neighborhood the number should be higher. In October, Right to the City, a national network of grassroots organizations fighting against gentrification, released a survey about Brooklyn’s vacant condos. “We identified 60 residential buildings that appeared to contain a significant amount of empty units and 48 that appeared to be stalled in construction,” says Jose Lopez, of Make the Road, a non-profit organization based in Bushwick, and a member of Right to the City alliance.

979 Willoughby Avenue was one of those buildings. But Tischler refuses to define it as a vacant building. “There are no vacant buildings in Bushwick,” he says. “People are always looking for new places and want to move here.” The real trouble, he adds, is the bureaucracy that slows down development. In April 2007, his building was almost complete. Each apartment had a private garage, utility room and roof-deck access. The eight apartments were on sale. An 834 square foot studio was on sale for $399,000, two 1,883 square foot four decks penthouses listed for $668,000. But new inspections found several faults in the chimney, the boiler, and the elevator. Every new problem meant more money lost for Vintage Building which had already invested $1 million for the land and $1.2 million for the building. Tischler says that they were all minor faults, and he blames the inspectors for having stopped his job – “Next time I’m going to build in New Jersey,” he says. But now the building faces a harder market.

“I already have some offers,” Tischler says. In three months, he adds, he’s sure that all the apartments of the building will be sold. He’s dropped the prices for the two penthouses’ price to $ 600,000. But even if the other prices stay the same, Tischler’s cost will barely be repaid. The investment did not work as expected. Still, Tischler remains confident in Bushwick.

But Staniford is not. “I think that all new developers in Bushwick are in trouble,” he says. “Most in New York City are in trouble, I don’t really see a recovery anytime soon.” His general view is that the prices will drop again 10-15percent over the next six months.

Bushwick has been characterized by a high number of foreclosures. In 2007 the neighborhood had the third highest rate of housing foreclosures in New York City: 57.8 per 1,000 of 1-4 family properties. The number has nearly tripled since 2000, according to New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, an academic research center devoted to the public policy aspects of land use, real estate development and housing. In 2008 they totaled 379, according to Right to the City alliance. In an average week of last November, ending on Thursday the 20th, PropertyShark.com registered 14 lis pendens, the formal notice that starts the foreclosure process. A sign of a high amount of future foreclosures, according to Staniford.

“Developers in distress won’t be able to pay their mortgage and they’re going to be no new developers in the future,” says Staniford. In his gloomier forecast, what once made Bushwick an interesting new neighborhood could play against it. Investing on an area “not as well established,” as he says, could seem too dangerous. “It could fall further,” he adds. “The decrease of services provided by City of New York due to budgets cuts will affect poor neighborhoods. It could cause a potential collapsing in prices in Bushwick.”

Still, some developers see a chance to get through the recession. Castle Braid, a former factory at 114 Troutman St., was opened last October and 75 of its rentals units are already occupied. Even if analysts like Staniford consider going into renting another sign of distress, the developer, Mayer Schwartz, is satisfied with his results and confident he can fill all the units in the next two or three months.

“I would not develop a big project now,” he says. Without loans from the banks to buy or to develop thinking big seems impossible. But Schwartz is confident in smaller family houses and rentals. And the area still seems to appeal to his customers, young artists and professionals. “I think that switching to rent in Bushwick is not as devastating as in Williamsburg,” he says. “Here the prices are cheaper.” That is what people are looking for in a recession. Moreover the area in the last five years is improved. “There are café, artists, people want to live here. Bushwick is picking up,” Schwartz says.

Still, he doesn’t hide the fact that times are hard. “Condos are dead,” he admits. But the rental market still covers the expenses, and perhaps provides hope for that once-imagined brighter future for Bushwick.