Want to Live in Prospect Heights? Get Ready for a Bidding War

James Guimaraes was on mile seven of his last training run for the New York City Marathon when he got sucked into a bidding war. The Corcoran broker’s clients had an offer in on something, and it was the sellers’ agent calling: Was there any way to up the bid? Guimaraes spent the next four miles of his run trading off on calls between his clients and the other agent. He was on the Queensboro Bridge when he arrived at the number to lock in the sellers — it was over asking, as these things tend to go. “After that, I get home, fill out a deal sheet, and get that to the seller’s side instead of dying on the floor, which is what I wanted to do,” he tells me.

The thing is, this dash to close the deal wasn’t for a pristinely restored Park Slope brownstone, or something on Sidney Place in Brooklyn Heights, but a bring your contractor apartment in Prospect Heights. It’s apparently part of a broader trend playing out in the neighborhood: According to data from StreetEasy, 50 percent of sales in Prospect Heights this year through September have gone over asking price, the largest share of any other part of the city. What this also means is that Prospect Heights has now dethroned Park Slope from its five-year run as the king of bidding wars.

If you’re surprised, brokers say they aren’t. The ones I talked to were quick to tick off the neighborhood’s selling points — Vanderbilt Avenue, with its restaurants and vaunted (albeit shrinking) Open Streets program; proximity to Prospect Park; and plenty of transit options to get you into the city in less than 30 minutes. (As for the schools, perhaps your kids will survive without PS 321.) It’s also a relative bargain: The current median sale price in Prospect Heights is $1,197,000 compared to $1,610,000 in Park Slope. “As all of the brownstone neighborhoods have gotten more expensive,” Corcoran’s Jessica Buchman tells me, places like “Carroll Gardens, Gowanus, and Prospect Heights have all gone up in value because they’re a little bit less expensive.” (One of her clients was also just in a bidding war in Prospect Heights — she won by paying $185,000 over asking. “The seller loved our enthusiasm,” she says.)

There’s a lot of overasking going around these days: Per a recent market report from StreetEasy, one in four sales in Brooklyn in September were for more than the asking price. Which is maybe why many buyers are going into these negotiations expecting other bidders: At least, that’s what happened with another family Guimaraes represented looking to buy a three-bedroom, two-bath on St. John’s Place. The original listing price was $1.595 million — but “We knew that going in … this is worth more than this,” he says. There were around 11 other offers in the mix, and after enduring a few rounds of escalating offers, his clients came to him asking: “What do we need to do to blow these guys out of the water?” They offered a number that Guimaraes declined to share but said would have been “silly” for the sellers to turn down. Getting silly apparently worked. They won, he said.