Which might not be such a bad idea, come to think of it.
If those buyers rechanneled their searches away from Manhattan, they might discover there are still hefty discounts to be had in the other boroughs, despite all the drumbeating about how certain areas have recently achieved parity with Manhattan. (Sorry, Brooklyn!)
Of course, picking a home also means factoring in layouts, style and neighborhood, and more specific qualities, like whether it has a garden. And certain types of homes don’t exist in any meaningful way in certain boroughs. If you have your heart set on a high-rise glass-walled starchitect-created condo, chances are you’re going to bypass Staten Island, where single-family houses are the rule.
Likewise, two-families are the most frequently traded category in the Bronx, so unless you feel like playing landlord, or have a need to house a mother-in-law, that area may not merit much of a look.
But instead of some ivy-draped West Village town house, say, a buyer could pick up a similar-size split-level ranch in Queens, with a driveway and a garage, and have oodles of cash left over for tomato plants.
A borough-by-borough analysis follows of the median prices for specific segments of the market, based mostly on data supplied by Miller Samuel, the appraisal firm, from Jan. 1 through mid-August. And to expand the range of opportunities, also included is what you might end up with if you decided to stretch and double the median price.
Brooklyn
The condo craze of the past decade, which ebbed during the recession but is surging again, can seem a phenomenon exclusive to Manhattan, with so many developers competing to build the island’s tallest condo.
But Kings County has also added condos at a brisk and sustained clip, to the point where they now change hands there more than any other kind of home. Sure, stoop-fronted brownstones may be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of Brooklyn, but these condos are often one and the same, tucked inside those filigreed row houses, a few units at a time.
And for about $651,000, which is the median condo sale price in the borough, one could be yours.
Consider the unit listed for $657,000 by the Corcoran Group this summer at 88 Quincy Street, a four-apartment limestone row house in Bedford-Stuyvesant that went condo in 2008. Past an angled stoop sits Apartment 3, a 780-square-foot two-bedroom with birch cabinets, oak floors and a washer and dryer.
In late August, it went into contract for above the asking price, said Nichole Thompson-Adams, the listing agent. “This part of Brooklyn is really taking off.”
Even so, the Quincy Street dwelling went for a fraction of the cost of the typical condo in Manhattan, where the median condo sale price is $1.23 million.
But for all its well-preserved historic districts, Brooklyn has also been awash in some major construction projects, especially in Williamsburg, where warehouses have given way to block-size developments that feature pools, yoga rooms and parking garages, and upstairs, exotic wood finishes.
Double the median condo price in Brooklyn, and you could score something along the lines of Apartment 4-V at 80 Metropolitan Avenue, a two-bedroom, two-bath corner unit with wenge vanities and a Bosch dishwasher. It recently went into contract for the asking price, $1.329 million.
That complex, with 119 units, sold out in 2011, for prices that averaged $730 a square foot, said Jay Overbye, the Halstead Property agent who handled sales for the building before it opened, and also took care of the resale of No. 4-V. Now, though, units routinely sell for $1,200a foot, he said. “It’s certainly not the deal it once was,” Mr. Overbye said. “But $1,200 a foot in Manhattan? That would be hard to find.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: September 6, 2013
An earlier version of this article misstated the surname of a researcher in the sociology department at Queens College. She is Susan Weber-Stoger, not Weber.