While You Were Out

You realize that the housing market in Brooklyn’s East New York is booming, don’t you? And even if residents aren’t sure whether the neighborhood is entirely safe, it’s too good of an investment to move:

For years, Maria N. Rodriquez has been hoping her parents would sell their home in East New York, Brooklyn, and move someplace safer and more appealing.

Ms. Rodriguez, a 33-year-old mortgage consultant, remembers her anxious teenage years walking down desolate streets in a neighborhood that was one of the most run-down and crime-plagued communities in New York City.

But now, Ms. Rodriguez wonders whether her parents were right to stay in the two-family attached brick house on Montauk Avenue – a mile west of the Brooklyn-Queens border – that they bought with an uncle for $62,000 in 1987.

East New York has changed, especially in the last five years. Last year, her parents’ home was assessed at $350,000, a breathtakingly high number for those who think of the neighborhood as a symbol of urban decay.

Although the crime rate is still higher than in some neighborhoods in the city, it is way down. “For years I pleaded with them to move to a better neighborhood for safety reasons, and because I was embarrassed,” said Ms. Rodriguez, who now lives in a small ranch-style house in Island Park, on Long Island. “I made friends who lived elsewhere and they’d heard about East New York and would not come visit.”

When she would push for a move, her parents – Domingo, 62, and Milagros, 53 – “would always say yes,” Ms. Rodriguez said, “but that would be the end of the conversation.” Perhaps, somehow, they knew something better was coming.

Only a decade ago, the community was pockmarked by “vacant lots, burned-out homes on every block,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “Now they’re putting homes into every nook and cranny.”

The numbers support her perception. From 1995 through the first half of this year, according to the New York City Department of Finance, the average price for a two-family home in East New York nearly tripled, to $351,561 from $122,524.