New York's Best Neighborhoods for First-time Home Buyers

November 21,2016 | By ALAN LIGHTFELDT

 

For the second straight year, we decided to calculate how much home a “typical” first-time home buyer household could afford in New York City and identify which neighborhoods in 2016 would be the best bet for finding homes for sale within that budget.

For this year’s analysis, we are making certain assumptions about income, mortgage-to-income ratios, down payment and mortgage interest rates (all of which are outlined in the last section of this post). In 2016, we found that a typical first-time buyer can afford a home priced up to $524,050.

If that budget sounds impossibly low for New York City, you may be surprised to discover that there were homes for sale priced at or below $524,050 in virtually every neighborhood in 2015. There were 13,518 listings across the city that would be considered affordable to a first-time buyer with the greatest share located in Brooklyn (29.6 percent), followed by Manhattan (23.1 percent), Queens (22.9 percent), Staten Island (12.3 percent) and the Bronx (12.1 percent).