STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — If you have a new neighbor, odds are strong that they may have hailed from Brooklyn. According to a new study, out of the 2,669 Brooklyn residents who purchased property this year, a whopping 315 of them – or 12% – have decided to relocate to Staten Island.
“While 77% of buyers stayed in Brooklyn, about one in eight bought in Staten Island — the highest inter-borough movement in the city,” noted the report, which was penned by Eliza Theiss for Property Shark. “That trend likely reflects space-seeking and affordability-driven shifts across the Narrows.”
According to Theiss’ research, the Brooklyn-to-Staten Island migration came from just four neighborhoods — Sunset Park, Bensonhurst, Borough Park and Bay Ridge — and was most likely fueled by a disparity in real estate prices. Redfin’s data showed that Brooklyn’s median home sale price hovered at $850,000 in the first five months of 2025, while the average Staten Island home fetched approximately $712,000 during the same span.
And that pricing could also be the reason why most Staten Islanders stayed put. The study noted that 97% of Staten Islanders who purchased a home in the first half of 2025 stayed within their home borough.
But despite this trend, Theiss also noted that the NYC housing market is far from insular. Instead, purchasing patterns reflect “a dynamic mix of inter-borough moves, statewide demand and a spread of out-of-state buyers — with a small but suggestive layer of international activity at the margins.”
“Rather than a single trend, the overall picture points to parallel buyer patterns playing out across boroughs, budgets and buyer types,” the report concluded. “Ownership in NYC today is not monolithic: It’s layered, uneven and increasingly defined by how people buy as much as where.”
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