Eastern Queens saw a concentration of the borough’s highly affordable areas while western Queens was home to the least affordable neighborhood in a new real estate report.
Analysts from real estate site StreetEasy compared the median sales price in each New York City neighborhood with the median sales price for its respective borough to determine the most and least affordable spots to live. In Queens, the median sales price clocks in at $500,000.
In the “World’s Borough” — which was divided into 53 separate neighborhoods — Jamaica Estates was deemed most affordable. The median home sales price in this eastern Queens neighborhood — with a housing stock ranging from co-op apartments to large mansions — was listed at $202,500: a nearly 60 percent difference from the borough median.
Second and third most affordable were neighboring Briarwood, Kew Gardens Hills and Kew Gardens, where the median sale prices are $225,000, $272,000 and $282,944, respectively. Oakland Gardens, Howard Beach and Little Neck came in at numbers 5, 6 and 7.
Deemed least affordable was the western Queens neighborhood of Long Island City, where the median sale price was $934,520 — 87 percent more than the borough median. Ridgewood, Auburndale and Fresh Meadows ranked second-, third- and fourth-least affordable in the borough, with median sale prices of $930,000, $918,000 and $895,000.
Whitestone, South Ozone Park and South Richmond Hill each saw median sales prices at the borough median.
Although there is a price gap of more than $700,000 between the most and least expensive neighborhoods in the borough, analysts noted, nearly half of all Queens neighborhoods are “somewhat accessible to the typical New York buyer.”
A report published by StreetEasy in April determined that the cost of renting or owning a home in Queens is closest to the citywide medians of any borough, “making good on Queens’ reputation as the place of choice for middle-class New Yorkers.” Renters in the borough see a 36 percent cost-to-income ratio, while homeowners face a marginally higher cost-to-income ratio at 37 percent.
Visit the StreetEasy website to access an interactive map of the city’s most and least affordable neighborhoods.
