For those of you who hoped news of the impending L train shutdown would drive out all the rich people so Williamsburg can dedouchefy, there's good news and there's bad news. According to a new report, rents have, in fact, dropped slightly off the Bedford L stop—though before you start filing a liquor license application for Zebulon 2.0, note that Williamsburg is still...not that cheap. But give it time!
Once again, real estate blog Brick Underground released their annual list of median rents within a five-block radius of stops ranging from Bedford Avenue to Broadway Junction, and it appears, blissfully, that median rents off the Bedford Stop have gone down 11.4 percent from 2015. The site hypothesizes that the massive influx of high-end developments coupled with fears over the future LPocalypse likely contributed to the decrease, though perhaps "The Bedford Stop" scared off some prospective renters, too. The median rent in Yupster Times Square is now $3,100/month—in 2015, it was $3450/month, up from $3,350/month in 2014.
The Lorimer stop also saw a decrease, with median rents going down 5.7 percent (to $3,300/month) from 2015. The number of rental units are also up a wild 93.7 percent from 2015, which likely lessened the burden on renters.
As for stops further down the line: the Grand, Montrose, Halsey and Broadway Junction stops all saw decreases in median rent, while the Dekalb and Myrtle-Wyckoff stops saw increases of less than 3 percent. The Morgan stop saw the greatest median spike—up 7.1 percent from 2015—while the Graham stop has experienced a slightly smaller uptick of 6.2 percent.
It's impossible to predict if rents will continue to go down as L train doomsday approaches, but we're all going to be priced out once they build that floating inflatable condom tunnel to Manhattan.
