Trendy neighborhoods can't escape New York City's housing slump as sales drop

In 2005, when New York magazine first dubbed Bed-Stuy some of "the hottest turf" in the city, 1,004 one-, two- and three-family homes sold in the Brooklyn neighborhood.

By fall 2007, New York was calling Bed-Stuy the city's "next hipster enclave," apparently without noticing that the number of house sales had quietly dropped to 759.

In the last year, the bottom fell out, with 423 houses sold - a 58% decline from the "hottest turf" days of 2005.

RELATED: CITY HOUSING MARKET HAMMERED

In Bed-Stuy and across New York's outer boroughs, the market for housing has collapsed, hitting nearly every neighborhood.

While poorer neighborhoods afflicted by rocketing foreclosure numbers got it the worst, so-called "pioneer" neighborhoods such as Bed-Stuy also took it in the neck. The effects of the collapse could also be found in well-established middle- and upper-middle-class locales across both Brooklyn and Queens.