Home and condo prices skyrocket in Brooklyn. What does that mean for tech?

Brooklyn continues to become a more expensive place to live, according to a new report from the Real Estate Board of New York.

The average condominium sale price increased 39 percent since the first quarter of last year and the average one-to-three-family home sale price increased 7 percent year over year.

The average price of a condominium is now $1,138,000, according to the report, and $986,000 for the one-to-three family homes that dominate so many of the neighborhoods.

This is not necessarily good news for the Brooklyn tech scene, which is premised on being lower cost and more creative than Manhattan, while still being close to Manhattan.

Many Brooklyn startups employees live in Brooklyn, and those tech companies which have moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn often do so in part because it’s easier for their workers. If Brooklyn marginally loses its competitive advantage in price (which it may not: average condo prices in Manhattan rose by a comparable 27 percent), it could mean a marginal reduction in its appeal for companies. It could also speak to its success.

The median price of one-to-three-family dwellings, those often rented out to young tech workers, rose by 25 percent in one year in Bedford-Stuyvesant and by an astonishing 87 percent in Red Hook. And that’s median!

Read the full report

The price increases haven’t gone unnoticed by locals, some of whom blame the influx of startups into the borough for the phenomenon. This past fall, demonstrators from a group called the Brooklyn Anti-Gentrification Network picketed a startup pitch event in Downtown Brooklyn. Their chant? “Gentrification is not innovation.”