Brooklyn Investment Sales Dollar Volume Down 34%: Report

The volume of commercial property transactions in Brooklyn held steady last quarter, but sellers these days are getting significantly less for their properties than they were at the end of last year.

Overall, investment sales saw a total dollar volume of $936 million across 258 deals in the borough in the first quarter, down 34 percent quarter-over-quarter and 15 percent compared to the same time last year, according to a new report from TerraCRG. 

The average closed transaction size also dropped 35 percent since last quarter, from $5.6 million to $3.6 million, the report found.

Despite the drop in size, the number of deals getting done last quarter remained stable, actually slightly rising about 2.4 percent from the 252 deals made in the final quarter of 2023. It’s still a slight dip from the 273 deals made in the first quarter of 2023, according to the report. 

The multifamily and industrial market continued to be a bright spot for Brooklyn and New York City writ-large. Transaction volume for multifamily assets rose 43 percent last quarter compared to the previous one, while dollar volume for such assets increased 21 percent, totaling $247 million, per the report. 

“In the first quarter, we saw a continued demand for buildings with free-market units,” Matt Cosentino, executive vice president of sales, and partner at TerraCRG, said in a statement. “Rent-stabilized property owners started to move forward with sales instead of continuing to wait for a change in the rent-stabilized housing market, which we believe spurred an uptick in activity for multifamily transactions.”

Still, residential development site transactions have suffered lately. Such sales saw an overall drop of 63 percent in dollar volume and a 29 percent drop in transaction volume quarter-over-quarter. 

Industrial sales, meanwhile, totaled $185 million. Although that represents a 42 percent reduction in dollar volume quarter-over-quarter, it’s a 117 percent boost compared to the first quarter of 2023. 

The largest industrial trade in Brooklyn in recent months was Equity Resource Investments’ sale of a self-storage facility at 1301 Avenue M to Heitman Capital Management for $46.9 million, according to the report.

The largest overall trade during the first quarter of this year in the borough was National Grid’s sale of a 16-acre industrial development site, at 2731 W 12th Street, to Prologis for $51 million. National Grid had been trying to offload the site since the end of 2020. 

Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.