Brooklyn’s luxury housing market saw the fastest price growth of any major metropolitan area in the U.S. last year, according to data from Realtor.com.
Luxury prices in the New York City borough increased over 30%, growing twice as fast as its mainstream market, according to the property site, which collected data on the top 5% of sales in 74 counties with significant luxury activity in 2017.
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For the most part, the strongest luxury housing growth in the U.S. centered in second-home hotspots like the ski resorts of Colorado and island escapes in Hawaii, according to the data. Only a few urban centers, like Brooklyn, Seattle, and Marin County, California, saw the high-end move faster than the overall market.
Brooklyn, which long served as a second-best option to Manhattan, has reinvented itself as a first choice, according to appraisal firm Miller Samuel, which has been tracking the market there for roughly a decade.
"The sweet spot for the market, the price range with the largest percent gain in sales, was the $2 million to $3 million market," according to the latest report by firm.
As luxury developers see success in projects outside of Manhattan, expensive condos have also helped fuel the high-end market in Queens. Luxury prices in that borough jumped nearly 11% last year, with around a fifth of sales over $1 million.
Meanwhile, a local economic boom is aiding the Seattle property market. In the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro area, luxury prices soared 16%, to an average $1.181 million, according to the Realtor data.
Blue-chip employers such as Starbucks and tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon are fueling the good times in Seattle. Silicon Valley workers are also jumping ship to work in offices in the nearby but far less expensive city. Facebook and Google both have satellite offices there.
On average, it takes a luxury home in Seattle only two-and-a-half months to sell, according to Realtor. By comparison, the average for the 74 markets included in the Realtor data was 140 days or 4.66 months.
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Marin County, to the north of San Francisco, also saw its luxury sector move faster than the overall market, with average sales prices in the top 5% growing 11.63% in 2017.
Strong price growth in the luxury sector runs counter to an overall trend in the U.S., where overdevelopment has left many of the country’s urban centers with an oversupply of very expensive homes and a dearth of affordable housing. For instance, Manhattan saw luxury housing prices grow less than 6% in 2017 while prices in the general market grew twice as fast.