Brooklyn Heights Land Is Most Expensive In The Country: Report

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — An acre of land in Brooklyn Heights will cost developers nearly 7,800 times more than a plot the same size in Arkansas, a new report found. In fact, it will cost cost more than any one-acre spot across the country.

The $41 million average price tag for residential land in Brooklyn Heights has landed it on the top of a list of the ten highest-priced land values in the country, according to an analysis of almost 40,000 U.S. neighborhoods released by the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Brooklyn neighborhoods — including central and eastern Park Slope and Gowanus/Carroll Gardens — actually took up four spots on the list, joining other wealthy coastal areas in California.

"We know why," a report on the data in The Washington Post said. "Ultra-valuable land in Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope is significantly closer to the F train, food co-ops and high-paying jobs than is the rolling farmland in Western Arkansas or Northern South Carolina. They also tend to have higher taxes and zoning restrictions."

The $23 million to $41 million cost of land in these top ten was significantly higher than the lowest value per acre, found in more rural southern areas, all for under $7,000.

The Post and the report's authors contended that it reveals that not only is the distribution of land wealth unequal, but the growth in that wealth as well. The spots with the most expensive land were also where values were growing the fastest.

"People often focus on what causes rising land prices," The Post wrote. "But few ask the crucial follow-up: what do rising land prices cause? Right now, the answer is inequality."

The data can also help researchers predict where housing bubbles could appear, the report said, since large increases in land prices often show where "house price busts during the financial crisis."

The researchers — William Larson and Jessica Shui (FHFA), Morris Davis (Rutgers) and Stephen Oliner (American Enterprise Institute) — analyzed 16 million appraisals submitted between 2012 and 2018 and stripped away the value of the homes to only measure the cost of land.

The report didn't account for some other New York City neighborhoods, though.

"A few neighborhoods (Census tracts) where land for single-family homes is extraordinarily expensive, such as Manhattan, and where it would be quite affordable, such as many sparsely populated rural areas, won’t appear in the study because there weren’t many relevant transactions," the Post explained.

Read the full report here.

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.