Maspeth residents know their neighborhood to be one of the few areas in Queens that has resisted transformative change over the past decade, especially when compared to other neighborhoods in the borough.
The residential neighborhood is mostly made up of people who own their own homes, but there’s also a good amount of renters. In Maspeth, there are 6,628 housing units that are owned and 5,995 that are rented as of 2018, according to the American Community Survey.
“There are more working people in Maspeth,” MaryAnna Zero of Home Hunters Real Estate said. “I know for a fact, people take pride in their homes and take care of their homes.”
Zero, a lifelong resident of Maspeth, told QNS that the neighborhood offers families a “country” feel while being close enough to Manhattan.
A one-family home can go for $750,000 to $850,000, while a two-family house can go for anywhere between $1 million and $2.6 million. The homes in Maspeth, though, tend to be older, colonial-style homes.
Zero believes the housing market is steady, with most homes selling “relatively fast.”
Part of the reason that Maspeth hasn’t experienced the developmental boom that its neighboring Ridgewood has in the last few years is because of the lack of public transportation.
That, as well as regulations that were put in place back in 2010, which rezoned about 300 blocks in Maspeth, Middle Village and Glendale. These regulations protect the “character of these neighborhoods” with lower density and contextual zoning districts (such as R3A, R4A and R5D).
It also means that there are heavier commercial overlay regulations, in order to eliminate or reduce the “depths of commercial overlay zones where appropriate to prevent commercial intrusion on residential blocks.”
Zero thinks that Maspeth benefits from having a “close neighborhood” feeling, and can’t see it changing too much any time soon.
