Tips for Finding Affordable Housing in Brooklyn

Finding reasonably-priced housing in Brooklyn has become increasingly difficult in recent years. Despite real estate prices dropping toward the end of 2o17 in Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx, Brooklyn’s prices continued to rise. Even if price growth slows, the astronomical price levels have done their damage.

Many Brooklynites have already been priced out of neighborhoods where they’d like to live, or have lived their entire lives. This may sound bleak, but all hope is not lost. New York City requires new buildings to designate affordable units for tenants that meet certain income criteria, and then choose from applicants via a lottery to fill those units.

These housing lotteries are an excellent way to find a nice place to live on any budget. However, it’s tough to rely solely upon this option in your housing search. Fortunately, Brooklyn-based realty companies — like MySpace NYC and Nooklyn — exist to guide you in your quest for affordable housing.

Lotteries: Three Sites to Apply

The Department of Housing Preservation & Development (HPD) and NYC Housing Development Corporation (HDC) define housing lottery income requirements based on the Area Median Income (AMI). With units available to those with annual incomes between $0 and $182,655 depending on family size, many qualify for affordable housing units. The following three sites are the best places to search and apply for affordable housing lotteries.

NYC Housing Connect: A project sponsored jointly by HPD and HDC, this simple site allows renters to view and apply for affordable housing from a single list. They also have a handy guide to affordable housing that walks through each step of the application process. According to this guide, applicants already living in New York City receive a general preference over non-city residents. Applicants with qualifying disabilities, applicants who live in the same district to which they are applying, and applicants who work for the city government may also be given preference. NYC Housing Connect also directs potential applicants to the two below websites for additional lottery opportunities.

HPD Apartment Seekers: Directly on HPD’s website, here housing seekers can filter by borough, income level, and household size to find lottery properties to apply to. There’s considerable overlap between this site and NYC Housing Connect, but there are also exclusive listings, making this a worthwhile resource to use.

HDC Now Renting: This site features housing projects funded directly by HDC, and does not overlap with either of the other two sites. It’s a longer list than the other sites, but it doesn’t allow prospective tenants to apply directly through HDC. Instead, it directs apartment seekers to apply through each property’s respective development company.

Grassroots Brooklyn Realtors

With the low odds of winning the lottery, most people looking for a home in Brooklyn will end up using a realtor. With Brooklyn’s lucrative housing market, everybody and their cousin has become a realtor. However, not all realtors offer the same level of service, fairness, and expertise.

MySpace NYC is a Brooklyn-based real estate company that employs local, community ambassadors as realtors to ensure clients receive next-level service. With this approach, they maintain close, grassroots relationships with local landlords and keep an inventory of properties that are 95% no-fee.

Nooklyn takes a different approach while still maintaining a communal aspect in their properties. By leveraging technology to eliminate pain points in the traditional housing search, they’ve created a fair and transparent housing search process. For example, Nooklyn has built a roommate matcher into their listings to allow interested applicants to find other people to live with and reduce their cost of living.

Both of these firms have fostered a sense of community with local partners, hosting events for Brooklynites to come together, meet, and bridge the gap between new Brooklynites, lifelong Brooklynites, and everyone in between.

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MySpace COO Jordan McCray and Nooklyn CFO Moiz Malik kindly offered their insights into the Brooklyn real estate market for OurBKSocial to share with readers.

What’s the most undervalued neighborhood in Brooklyn right now?

Jordan McCray (JM): Where I see that right now is south of Prospect Park, so near Cortelyou Road, Flatbush-Ditmas Park area, Prospect Park South, Winter Terrace. That piece under the park is, to me where you find a couple things: a lot of local bars and restaurants, bigger apartments that haven’t been chopped down to fit the most amount of people into them, and you have the express trains there to make it convenient to get to the city in 40 minutes or less, which is awesome.

Moiz Malik (MM): With the L train, the whole promise was, “20 minutes and you’re in the city.” That request has become more like 30 minutes to get to the city. So that’s enabled other areas where people can move into. It’s really primarily below Crown Heights.

What trends do you see emerging in Brooklyn real estate in 2018?

MM: People choose their apartment based on how they can get to work. That’s the core of it. The reason Bushwick exists is because you get on the L train and you cut across the entire, it’s like the southern 7 train when you think about it. So you’re going to see North Brooklyn go down in rent, and you’re going to see areas like Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Kensington, and Flatbush go up because of that.

JM: First, and most importantly, I think you’ll see prices continue to fall. Developers are… building throughout Brooklyn. You’ll see more concessions than ever in the market, you know, “one month free,” “two months free,” to tenants, and that’s because supply is starting to outweigh the demand. If you look at the market, three or four years ago, there were five neighborhoods that people were primarily flocking to: Williamsburg, people were just getting into Bushwick, Prospect Heights, Dumbo, Brooklyn Heights, things of that nature. As Brooklyn has started to develop, different parts of Brooklyn have become more attractive and safe. As that continues to happen, you’ll see prices soften up and fall.

What should apartment and house seekers be careful of in their search?

MM: I think, more than anything, to make sure that they’re aware of all the costs. You know, there are certain things that are refundable, certain things that are non-refundable. Often, you find out about the costs of moving into an apartment when you show up to the showing, and there’s a high pressure element — obviously not at Nooklyn — but that is the case at a lot of companies, and finding out as much of the cost as possible before you go so that person doesn’t waste their time.Whether it’s asking for something like square footage information or something like that so you don’t just show up to something…really trying to do as much of that vetting before you even see the apartment, and figuring out what your priorities are as well.

What tips do you have for people looking for housing through the affordable housing lottery?

JM: To be honest with you it’s no secret sauce. It really is a luck thing, but I would just encourage anybody from any income level to always pay attention to the lottery. Also, apply for as much as you can. It increases your chances of getting picked, of course. But I think, it’s very common that people think that if they make average to above average on the income scale, that they cannot find affordable housing, which isn’t true. My first job here, I made $50 or $60 thousand dollars a year and I qualified for plenty of affordable housing. There’s affordable housing out there that has income requirements over $100,000.