Neighborhood Profile: Astoria, The Sum of All Parts
With median asking prices in Manhattan clocking in at $1.35M last quarter and record low levels of inventory, there is little sign the market there will let up any time soon. Queens, however, where median asking prices last quarter were $399.5K, may offer buyers a more palatable price point. Over the last 10 years, this stark comparison has been made many times and there has been no shortage of talk when Queens will come into its own. Long Island City is now in the mix for condo buyers hungry for luxury amenities. Astoria is ripe for its very own Eater heat map of hot restaurants. And Ridgewood is supposed to be the new Bushwick.
Given the lower price points, the burgeoning condo scene and the mix of ethnic diversity and cultural offerings, Queens is a great option for those unwilling to stomach Manhattan’s prices. This is especially so in Astoria where the median asking price last quarter was $559K for sales and $2,200/month for rentals.
> Search Homes for Sale in Astoria
The rental story in Astoria is particularly interesting as we’ve seen its median asking rents rise steadily in the past five years. Back in 2010, median asking rents in Astoria were $1,573 — well below the borough-wide median of $1,700/month. By 2013, however, Astoria rents outpaced Queens – indicating that the rental market there is picking up steam.
> Search Homes for Rent in Astoria
| Astoria Numbers (all home types) | |
| Median asking sale price | $559,000 |
| Median asking rent | $2,200 |
| Median square feet of all home types | 750 sq ft |
| Commute time to Union Square | 27 minutes |
Astoria: Always a market for renters?
Although Astoria has always been a strong market for renters given its high percentage of multi-unit dwellings, the area saw a real influx of renters after 2008, says Henry Davis, a broker with Douglas Elliman. In the years following 2008, when the housing market citywide came to screeching halt, many of the condos that were developed in Astoria during the housing boom were converted to rentals. As a result over the last six years, the neighborhood has seen an even deeper rental inventory than normal and attracted an influx of renters who have snapped up housing stock.
(Source: BEV Norton via Flickr Creative Commons)
Despite the influx of new residents, Astoria remains a solidly residential and deeply diverse neighborhood. Abutting Hunters Point and Long Island City, where the glassy condos keep on rising, Astoria offers a more traditional community feel and a whole lot more blue sky. The buildings tend to top out at four stories and two-family homes are often split up into multiple units offering options for renters and buyers looking for simple, one-bedroom homes.
One-bedroom homes make up 42 percent of the housing options for renters and 39 percent for buyers making Astoria an appealing choice for young couples or roommates looking to share a two-bedroom.
One-Bedroom for $2,000/month
Currently on the market, this one-bedroom located at 30-26 31st Street is renting for $2,000/month and is right off the 30th Avenue-Grand Avenue N/Q stop. Its open kitchen and ample storage space would be hard to find elsewhere in the city at this price point, but in Astoria this one-bedroom is being marketed for just under the neighborhood median asking rent of $2,200.
>Search One-Bedrooms for Rent in Astoria
Finding the balance in NYC
“There are lots of young couples moving in that know the balance between location and being house-broke,” says Ryan Buesser, a consultant at Nielsen who moved to the neighborhood in 2012. “It’s also a very eclectic crowd with a smidge of Hipster Brooklyn, but very laid back. The community seems a little more spread out so there is no keeping-up-with the Joneses.”
(Source: Gary Wong via Flickr Creative Commons)
Residential feel and calmer pace of life aside, Astoria’s prices are the biggest draw for many, including Buesser. “We moved to Astoria for the money,” Buesser states. “It was either someplace in Spanish Harlem or a nice place in Astoria.”
Originally on the UES in a three-bedroom, Buesser relocated to Astoria after one of his roommates moved out and he was left looking for a two-bedroom under $2,400/month, which he found with a garden apartment of a multi-family home on Broadway and 42nd Street off the Steinway R stop.
“We were actually living in a space rather than cramming into a box. We had a backyard with a grill and a little plot of land for a garden and to sunbathe in. That’s a game changer.”
The promise of landing a place with some extra space in Astoria is well founded. Last quarter, the median size of listings in Astoria was 750-square feet. With its spacious layouts, traditional prewar two-family homes and relative distance to Downtown Manhattan (it’s a 25-minute commute from the Steinway R stop to Union Square), Astoria can feel like a pocket outside the New York City real estate bubble. “My neighborhood felt like it wasn’t even a part of New York,” says Buesser.
(Source: Keith Putnam via Flickr Creative Commons)
Manhattanites moving to Astoria: Fact or fiction?
The narrative of frustrated Manhattanites like Buesser relocating to Queens is cogent and practical, for sure, but according to brokers who work in the area, it’s more of a New York anomaly than reality.
“It’s a myth that people are leaving Manhattan for Astoria,” says Vickie Palmos, an agent with Douglas Elliman who has worked in Astoria for over 10 years. “Manhattanites are very loyal to the island and don’t want to leave.”
Although Buesser is himself a Manhattan expat, he would agree with Palmos, noting that “Astoria is definitely not for people having a nightlife in Manhattan. You do not want to be trying to get home to Queens past 11 pm consistently.”
Despite Palmos’ skepticism on the migration patterns of Manhattanites heading to Queens, she makes no bones about the recent influx of new residents, “People are definitely moving in. It’s definitely the millennial set, straight out of college.”
From Mom and Dad’s to Astoria-Ditmars
Such is the case for one of Palmos’ recent clients, who landed a job at CitiField after graduation and is looking for his first place in the city. “This is typical for me,” says Palmos, “There are a lot of people coming to Astoria who are moving out of their parents’ home for the first time and moving to the city.”
(Source: Young Sok Yun via Flickr Creative Commons)
Gina Pastorelli, who moved to the city from Seattle with her boyfriend, Chad Quaglia, tells a similar story. Quaglia was finishing up undergrad in Boston while Pastorelli was working and renting in Seattle. The place Pastorelli had been living in Seattle was a large two-bedroom with a dishwasher and balcony, so it was hard to swallow paying a whole lot more for a place that didn’t even have a full kitchen as was the case with many apartments they saw in Manhattan. Neither of them knew much about Astoria but shifted their search there on the recommendation of a friend who cited lower prices and bigger layouts.
The Astoria place Pastorelli eventually landed is nicer than many of the other options she and her boyfriend saw in the neighborhood, but nonetheless was a big lifestyle shift from Seattle. As is typical for many Astoria renters, the couple rents a one-bedroom in a multi-family home. The apartment has been renovated, but there is no dishwasher or washer-dryer in either the unit or the building. Their neighbors are mix of other young couples and older veterans of the neighborhood. “There’s a lady below us that’s probably been there for 30 or 40 years,” she laughs.
The life cycle of an Astoria resident
Despite the relative drawbacks of the apartment – its simplicity and lack of amenities standard in almost every other housing market in the country – Pastorelli is happy in Astoria and has no plans of moving any time soon.
Coming to Astoria and staying put is common in the area. If it wasn’t for a boyfriend living in Connecticut, Buesser says, “I realistically never would have left.” Unlike other parts of the city where renters are often priced out of their current neighborhood when it comes time to buy, renters in Astoria frequently transition to buyers in the area.
“There’s an interesting lifecycle in Astoria with renting, then moving into condos as first-time homeowners and then a couple years later cashing out and moving into larger multi-family homes in the area,” says Palmos.
Although she’s a firm believer in the safety of investing in condos, she says many of her clients see opportunities as owners and landlords at multi-family homes elsewhere in Astoria.
(Source: Joselito Tagarao via Flickr Creative Commons)
Such was the case for Edgar Gonzalez and his wife who moved to the city from Caracas in 2012. After a short stint in Midtown, they moved into a one-bedroom off the Broadway N/Q stop with their six-month old son. The place they found offered a tax abatement, reducing the rent for the first 12 months of the lease from $3,500/month to $2,850. After a year, the abatement was set to expire, increasing the rent to market rate. The nearly 23 percent increase was enough to cause many of the renters in the building to move out after a year, including Gonzalez. After doing the math, he figured buying a one-bedroom in the area was a better bet than renting their current apartment at $3,500/month. They focused their search in Astoria and northern Queens, but ended up just south of their old apartment in a one-bedroom at the City Lights condominium at 4-74 48th Avenue in Hallets Point, a neighborhood just south of their former rental in Astoria.
The price premium in Astoria
It was a smart move and one that is likely to increase in value over time as property values in Astoria have been steadily rising in recent years. Over the past five years, for-sale units of all kinds in Astoria have consistently commanded a price premium in comparison to the rest of Queens. That premium has grown dramatically over the last few years, which has made the area more and more attractive to buyers like the Gonzalez family. In 2010 the median asking price in Astoria was 11.9 percent greater than all of Queens. By 2014, that premium jumped to 39.9 percent.
(Source: Young Sok Yun via Flickr Creative Commons)
“It’s a similar story to what Boerum Hill was 15 years ago,” says Davis. “Boerum Hill wasn’t bona-fide brownstone Brooklyn like the Heights and Park Slope were at the time, but it was an amazing investment for those who bought.” Brooklyn may have been an amazing investment 15 years ago, but the dream of owning there is quickly diminishing for renters in the borough as the median asking price in Brooklyn has creeped up to $649K. For renters in Boerum Hill, it’s an even grimer prospect with median asking prices hitting $1.48M there, well above Manhattan’s median asking price of $1.35M. As a result of the constant upward push of prices in Brooklyn, Davis is quick to point out that “Astoria’s getting a lot of people priced out of Brooklyn.”
“Astoria doesn’t have the brownstones of Brooklyn,” or the tony housing stock of the city’s more expensive neighborhoods, Davis concedes, but in Astoria “it’s about the sum of parts. It’s diverse both architecturally and ethnically, which makes a fun and casual place to live.”
And one that for the time being offers options for buyers and renters looking for more space for less.
Related: