ICYMI: Cobble Hill Retail Rents Dipped Last Year On Smith, Court Streets, Report Says

COBBLE HILL, BROOKLYN — Cobble Hill business owners got a little bit of relief last year in the form of retail rents that dipped a little more than 10 percent on two of the neighborhood's major streets, according to a new report.

The average asking price for ground-floor retail rent on Court Street was $151 per square foot in winter 2017, a significant decrease from $175 in winter 2016, an analysis from the Real Estate Board of New York shows. It's actually a small uptick from summer 2016, when the space on Court Street was going for around $145, according to the report.

A block away on Smith Street, the ground-floor retail rent was $122 per square foot in winter 2017, down from $139 a year ago. In the summer, that number was $134, showing a steady decline of retail rents on Smith Street.

The report looked at commercial real estate prices on 15 Brooklyn "corridors" and said rents increased in seven of them. In Cobble Hill, the report considered both Smith and Court Streets between Atlantic Avenue and Carroll Street.

"Our Brooklyn Retail Report Advisory Group saw a slowdown in leasing velocity along the Court Street corridor due to competition from lesser-priced ground floor retail spaces on the Smith Street corridor and other nearby corridors offering good value," the report said.

The Cobble Hill prices are also a bit higher than in nearby Park Slope, where retail rents went up on Seventh Avenue but dropped on Fifth Avenue.

The real estate report also cautions about reading too much into short-term changes.

"Although this report shows changes in average asking rents in most of the corridors analyzed, we must stress
that a change between two consecutive periods does not necessarily indicate a change in the market," the report says. "Such short-term fluctuations may only be the result of spaces coming on or off the market. However, as we build historical data, we can identify long-run trends that suggest a gradual market shift."

You can read the report in full here.

Image: Court Street in November 2016, via Google Streetview

Editor's note: This story was originally published on Thursday, April 6