Bay Ridge Holding Its Own

This past weekend's New York Times featured a "living in" piece about Bay Ridge in which Brooklyn real estate blog Brownstoner found clues to the neighborhood's resilience during the foundering real estate market of the past several years.

The fact that downzoning strategically curtailed condo development here during the height of the real estate bubble, coupled with the fact that this neighborhood has never experienced the kind of mass exodus of families (perjoratively referred to as "white flight") that turned many Brooklyn neighborhoods into vast "red zones" a generation or so ago, have contributed to Bay Ridge's remarkably stable housing values.

No doubt there's a relationship between the level of out-migration and the influx of development, as well.

The synergistic effect of people staying in place and development being capped works like landmarking: it tends to stabilize housing values. Non-residential owners -- commercial and not-for-profit entities -- are the housing values wild card, as we've seen in the sagas of the Green Church and Moussa Khalil.

The post from Brownstoner.