Is East New York the new Harlem?

BY JASON SHEFTELL
DAILY NEWS REAL ESTATE CORRESPONDENT

Thursday, March 13th 2008, 10:18 PM
 
Landscaping between two towers in MeadowWood at Gateway.

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Last Sunday, the sales center at MeadowWood at Gateway condominium was so busy with purchase activity it felt like Kmart just before Christmas.

Three generations of entire families waited anxiously for one of the 23 Fillmore Real Estate agents to usher them through five or six model apartments. Two older gentlemen looked at two- and three-bedrooms with water views. A woman in the elevator told an agent she would buy in the spring. A pregnant woman in her third trimester came to purchase a specific unit she had her eyes on for months.

Welcome to Brooklyn's East New York, where working-class families can find apartments loaded with granite countertops, bamboo floors, French door closets, and Crate and Barrel sinks for prices ranging from $110,500 studios to $350,000 three-bedrooms.

"Every place has its time," says Fillmore Real Estate's John-Paul Ho, who heads the 23-agent team selling the MeadowWood complex. "Now it's East New York. It's like a Cinderella story for the entire area."

Selling homes in the area for the past 15 years, Ho has seen the neighborhood go from good to bad to worse to the current renaissance. In the early 1990s, drug sales and carjackings were as prevalent as eviction notices and buildings with no heat.

Now, ground-up construction, condo conversions and a huge commercial shopping center have turned this often-maligned urban outpost on the city's fringe into an emerging

neighborhood where home ownership has become a priority instead of a pipe dream.

"There is no question that the neighborhoods with higher rates of home ownership have the greatest stability, schools and community services," says Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. "Brooklynites outside of the ‘Brownstone Belt' don't realize that we have an affordability issue in certain neighborhoods and we're losing families to other areas such as New Jersey. We're committed to not letting that happen."

Ho thinks East New York might be the new Harlem. "People who can't afford to buy in Harlem are coming here," he says. "They don't want to miss out on what they missed out on 20 years ago there. Right now, this is the best deal in town."

Mable Elliott, an assistant principal at P.S./I.S. 50 in East Harlem, bought a two-bedroom at MeadowWood for $225,000. She looked at $850,000 condos in midtown and Harlem before deciding on the East New York development.

"I wanted solid construction," says Elliott, who gave her daughter the rental rights to her apartment behind Lincoln Center on W. 62nd St.