What Does $1M Buy In NYC? Not As Much As It Used To

NEW YORK — A home buyer with a little over $1.1 million to spend could snag a sunny, 3,343-square-foot Park Slope apartment in 2003. But that same buyer in 2017 would be stuck with roughly a quarter of that space in the neighborhood — about 900 square feet.

That's just one example of how drastically home prices have shifted in some parts of New York City in recent years, according to a PropertyClub analysis published Tuesday.

The real estate listing website used city Department of Finance data to examine how the size of homes sold for around $1 million changed from 2003 through 2017. In several neighborhoods, the analysis indicates, that hefty pile of cash has far less buying power now than it did then.

In Tribeca, a nearly 1,300-square-foot condo on North Moore Street went for just over $1 million in 2003, the site says. In 2017, $1 million homes were nowhere to be found in the notoriously pricey neighborhood, according to PropertyClub — though one Battery Park City unit spanning just 766 square feet went for $1.02 million.

The outer boroughs haven't been immune, as gentrification has driven up housing prices in Brooklyn neighborhoods such as DUMBO, Williamsburg and Boerum Hill as well as Park Slope, PropertyClub writes.

A cool million could buy 1,536 square feet of Cobble Hill space in 2008 but just 998 square feet in 2017, according to PropertyClub. That's a 35 percent drop.

Long Island City, Queens has seen a similar drop — a 1,412-square foot condo there sold for $1 million in 2007, but the same amount could only buy 965 square feet in 2017, according to the site.

"Nowadays, everyone who is selling a piece of NYC real estate doesn’t think twice when putting an exorbitant price tag on it, knowing that people will without a doubt pay a hefty premium to live in the The Big Apple," PropertyClub writes.

Prices have indeed increased greatly in Queens and Brooklyn since 2008, while Manhattan's market has seen a recent "reset," with the median sales price falling bellow $1 million at the end of 2018, according to reports from the real estate firm Douglas Elliman.

Check out the graphic below to see how the value of $1 million has changed in certain neighborhoods, or read PropertyClub's full report here.