Real Estate
The Next Hot Neighborhood
30 AUGUST 2017 I LIC COURIER I www.qns.com
BY PATRICK W. SMITH
STRIBLING & ASSOCIATES
New York Magazine declared in Au-gust
1980 that #longislandcity was “The
Next Hot Neighborhood”. It took a very
long time, but as this article discusses,
#LIC has transitioned from a speculative
area for real estate investment to a very
desirable residential neighborhood that
seems poised to expand further in terms
of real estate prices, public amenities and
retail offerings.
I recently published The Long Island
City Condominium Report, the first re-port
to comprehensively analyze the LIC
condominium market from 2006, when
the first condominium came to market,
through yearend 2016.
The report received excellent press
coverage and a wide-range of market par-ticipants,
including developers, investment
partners, sellers and buyers have read the
report. Several readers commented back
regarding “The Luxury Report”, a special
section that analyzed 3 topics related to
Long Island City’s growing luxury market.
Following are the 3 main findings
from The Luxury Report:
1. The average price of an apartment in
the Top 10% grew by 44% from $1.296
million in 2007 to a very impressive
$1.865 million in 2016.
2. In 2009, only 14% of buyers in
Long Island City paid cash as compared
to 2016, when the percentage of cash
buyers increased to 24%.
3. In 2006, there were zero sales priced
at $1 million or more. In 2016, the number
and percentage of $1 million+ sales grew
to all-time highs of 116 recorded sales and
approximately 50% of all transactions. For
purposes of this article, we verified that the
market share of $1 million+ sales as of
midyear 2017 reached a new high of 52%.
