An apartment the size of a large closet may be a point of pride for many New Yorkers. For those who love their space, there's always Queens.
The borough has four of the city's top five neighborhoods where homebuyers can get the most space for their money, according to a report by StreetEasy. Ranking first is Briarwood, where the median asking price per square foot was US$339 last month.
The only place outside Queens in the top five was Brooklyn's Brownsville, at US$348 a square foot.
Buyers are putting a premium on space in the pandemic era, when many people are still working from home at least part time. New Yorkers committed to staying in the city would have better luck looking across the East River than in Manhattan, where the median price per square foot was US$1,612 in January.
In Briarwood -- about a 45-minute subway commute to Midtown -- a buyer theoretically could get a lavish 2,802 square feet (260 square meters) for US$950,000, the citywide median asking price last month. In Manhattan's hip Nolita neighborhood, that buys only 395 square feet, a space smaller than the average two-car garage.
The strength of the luxury market drove Manhattan's per-square-foot median up 11 per cent from a year earlier, the biggest annual increase since 2015, according to StreetEasy.
"There is a real separation between what is happening in Manhattan and the rest of New York City right now," said Nancy Wu, an economist at the listings website. "The price for a single square foot of space in Manhattan is more than double Brooklyn and Queens." - Bloomberg
