Rents up less than 1% in Brooklyn and Manhattan in June

According to this week’s market reports, rent prices are up in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens, but barely. New York is behind Mexico City as the least affordable city on a list of 30 global metros.

Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens rentals | MNS
Rental prices inched upwards in all three markets in May relative to the previous month, with 0.5 percent in Manhattan, 0.3 percent in Brooklyn, and 1 percent in Queens. In Queens, Long Island city was the priciest on average for studios, one- and two-bedrooms. Read the full reports for Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.

Luxury Sales | Olshan Realty
Twenty-one contracts were signed last week at $4 million and above, with an average 13 percent discount from asking price. The total asking dollar volume was $178 million. Read the full report here.

NY state housing | NYSAR
In New York state, 10,704 home sales, up by 4.6 percent from May 2016. Median sales price continued its upward climb, increasing by 7.1 percent compared to last May. Read the full report here.

Post-rent growth | ApartmentList
In New York City, post-rent income growth, or the income that remains after paying for rent, increased by 7.7 percent for knowledge workers, but decreased for blue-collar and service workers by 4.9 and 9.4 percent. Read the full report here.

Least affordable cities in the city | RentCafe
New York City came second only to Mexico City, where median rent requires 60 percent of median income. In New York, it’s 59 percent.

500 Kent Avenue in Williamsburg

Rabsky Group is in contract to buy a 2.65-acre development site along the Williamsburg waterfront from Consolidated Edison for $50 million, or $217 per buildable square foot, representatives for the developer and the utility giant confirmed to The Real Deal.

The prolific Brooklyn developer is planning a commercial building on the vacant site at 500 Kent Avenue, which offers 230,000 buildable square feet as-of-right, a spokesperson for Rabsky said. The current zoning allows for manufacturing, offices and some retail uses, given its inclusion in the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s Industrial Business Zone (IBZ).

In October, Con Edison hired Cushman & Wakefield to market the 115,000-square-foot lot and implied to potential buyers that a rezoning to residential was in the works. The city, however, responded by saying it would not allow for a rezoning.

Mike Clendenin, a spokesperson for Con Ed, said the deal remains subject to approval by the New York State Public Service Commission, prior to closing.

The site sits just south of Eliot Spitzer’s 857-unit rental project at 420 Kent Avenue and the Williamsburg Bridge. There is about 648 feet of frontage on Kent and Division avenues.

A Cushman team led by Stephen Palmese and Brendan Maddigan marketed the land for sale.

Rabsky, which made its name developing luxury rentals and condominiums in North Brooklyn, has increasingly branched out into commercial development. The firm filed plans last month for its first hotel, along Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, and paid $68 million for a site that allows its Downtown Brooklyn project to amass as much as 770,000 buildable square feet.  Rabsky is considering office or residential for the latter site.