Call it Long Island City East.
As city housing prices soar higher than the waterfront towers rising in Long Island City, more young professionals and families are moving into nearby Woodside, Jackson Heights and Elmhurst, real estate experts told The News.
“People are following the subway lines,” said Michael Tortorici, vice president of the brokerage firm Ariel Property Advisors. “Prices are pushing people to explore areas of the city they wouldn’t previously consider.”
The neighborhoods are especially appealing because they’re only about a 30-minute subway trip to Manhattan, he said.
Thomas Sullivan, 24, who works in marketing, moved to New York six years ago. Since then he has moved, and been priced out of, Williamsburg, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Ditmas Park and Astoria — before settling in Jackson Heights.
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“I got a really good deal,” said Sullivan, who pays $650 a month for one bedroom in a three-bedroom apartment. “It’s a really gorgeous neighborhood.”
Rentals in Woodside cost 25% less than Long Island City, said Eric Benaim, who runs real estate firm Modern Spaces.
And the price of land, where new apartment and condo buildings can rise, is about 50% to 60% less in Woodside than it is in Astoria or Long Island City, he said.
“Developers are snapping up one- and two-story commercial buildings or warehouses or even residential lots and tearing those down,” Benaim said.
Nicole Keschinger, 31, signed a lease Thursday with a friend on a two-bedroom apartment in The Icon 52, a 66-unit luxury building that just opened in Woodside.
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“We wanted to be close to the city and I think you get the best value for your money in that area,” said Keschinger, who works in finance.
But as demand has spiked in these neighborhoods — so have rents and asking prices.
Real estate broker Donna Nieto, of Century 21 Best, in Jackson Heights, said that’s partly because the buildings going up are stocked with more amenities.
“Everyone is now expecting a fitness room, parking, a washer and dryer in the units,” she said of the young professionals and families that are moving in.
Jeff Orlick, 31, a food blogger who hosts events in the area, said he moved to Jackson Heights seven years ago for its multiculturalism. It is the most ethnically diverse community in the country.
“There aren’t trendy bars popping up yet,” said Orlick, of iwantmorefood.com, a block that chronicles food and drink in Queens. “But I feel it coming. More and more younger people from Brooklyn and Manhattan are moving in here.”
