Brooklyn Yield Rankings: 5.8% Top, Under 3% in Premium Areas

Yields across 38 Brooklyn (Kings County) neighborhoods range from 5.8% in Stuyvesant Heights/Bed-Stuy (11233) down to under 3% in the premium waterfront and brownstone ZIPs. That spread is wider than the gap between any two property types at the borough level, which means WHERE you buy in Brooklyn matters more than HOW you structure the rental. And because New York City Local Law 18 effectively bans short-term rentals under 30 days for non-owner-occupied investment properties, this entire analysis runs through a long-term rental lens. The ranking below shows which neighborhoods lead on gross yield, and why the pattern holds.

Stuyvesant Heights/Bed-Stuy (11233) Leads Brooklyn on Gross Yield at 5.8%

Gross yields = annual income / sale price. Based on 3-bed house medians. The dashboard shows every property type and bedroom count.

Warning: short-term rental yields above reflect NYC Local Law 18. Entire-home rentals under 30 days are prohibited unless the host is present and registered, so non-owner-occupied investors cannot realise any meaningful short-term rental income. Treat the long-term yield column as the only actionable number.

Outer-Brooklyn Entry Prices Explain the Yield Lead

The top three suburbs on yield share one structural feature: they sit well below Brooklyn's borough-wide median sale price of roughly $1,065,940, while rents have held up relative to that discount. Stuyvesant Heights/Bed-Stuy (11233) leads because three-bed houses trade around $762,250, less than three-quarters of the borough median, yet monthly rent of $3,658 is within range of inner-Brooklyn figures. Rental demand in the neighborhood is anchored by commuter access on the A/C lines into Manhattan, ongoing brownstone renovations, and a deep tenant pool priced out of Park Slope and Fort Greene.

Sunset Park (11220) and Crown Heights (11213) follow a similar logic. Sunset Park (11220) benefits from N/R subway access, proximity to the 4th Avenue corridor, and an immigrant family rental base that has kept vacancy low for years. Crown Heights (11213) sits just east of Prospect Park, close enough to the park-adjacent prestige ZIPs to capture spillover demand without carrying the full entry cost. In each case the pattern is the same: yield comes from being one or two subway stops removed from the neighborhoods that command premium sale prices.

All three are primarily long-term rental plays. These are dense residential neighborhoods with year-round tenant demand rather than tourism demand, and even if the short-term rental ban were relaxed tomorrow, the nightly-rate economics would not favor these areas over lower Manhattan or DUMBO. For investors, the implication is straightforward: buy for rental income, not for Airbnb optionality.

The Yield-Price Trade-off Is Steep in Brooklyn

Brooklyn shows an unusually sharp inverse relationship between price and yield. An investor entering at $762,250 in Stuyvesant Heights/Bed-Stuy (11233) pays roughly a fifth of what a buyer pays in the borough's most expensive ZIP ($3,477,780), yet rents in the two areas differ by a much smaller multiple. That is why yields collapse as prices climb: buyers in premium Brooklyn are paying for amenity, school zones, walkability, and expected capital appreciation, not for rental income. The market has priced future growth into the sale price before the rental math runs.

Sale prices across Brooklyn span $503,543 at the low end to $3,477,780 at the top. Rent, by contrast, sits around $3,178 for the borough median three-bed house and does not scale nearly as aggressively. A buyer chasing the top yield accepts a very different capital-risk profile than a buyer paying the borough median: more exposure to neighborhood-specific dynamics, thinner comparable sales, and a narrower exit market. Neither is wrong, but they are different investments despite both being labelled "Brooklyn property".

Premium Brooklyn Neighborhoods Trade Income for Amenity

For context, here is how some of Brooklyn's most in-demand neighborhoods compare. These are established areas where investors typically accept lower yields in exchange for capital growth, liquidity, and tenant quality.

High-demand neighborhoods for context. Same methodology as the yield ranking above.

These neighborhoods yield less on long-term rent because their sale prices capitalise decades of amenity value: brownstone streetscapes, proximity to Prospect Park and the East River waterfront, top-ranked public schools, and deep owner-occupier buyer competition. The short-term rental column does not rescue the math either, because the NYC ban applies borough-wide. The investment case in premium Brooklyn rests on expected appreciation and liquidity at exit, not on monthly cash flow.

What the Ranking Doesn't Show

Gross yield is rent divided by price, which means a high yield can reflect depressed prices as easily as strong rents. Some of Brooklyn's higher-yielding ZIPs have trailed the borough on five- and ten-year appreciation, so the cash-flow advantage has partly come at the cost of equity growth. Total return, not gross yield, is the relevant lens for a multi-year hold. The dashboard's market score methodology weights both dimensions rather than ranking on yield alone.

The ranking also hides vacancy risk and tenant quality. A neighborhood with a thin rental pool, older housing stock, or a narrow employer base can deliver a theoretical yield on paper that never materialises in practice. Medians also lag: they capture the last six to twelve months of closed transactions, which in a fast-moving New York market can understate current conditions. Treat this ranking as a starting screen, not a buy list.

View Brooklyn in the dashboard → Free preview · every bedroom count and property type

Brooklyn's Top Yield Beats National Median, City Median Does Not

Brooklyn's borough-wide gross yield of 3.6% sits below both the New York state median of 5.3% and the national median of 5.3%. That gap is structural: high-cost coastal metros consistently trade yield for growth and liquidity. The top-ranked Brooklyn neighborhood at 5.8% does clear the national benchmark, but only just, and an investor chasing pure yield would find better numbers in upstate New York or Rust Belt markets where three-bed houses trade under $200,000. The question for a Brooklyn buyer is not whether the borough yields more than Buffalo (it doesn't), but whether NYC's appreciation and liquidity profile justifies the discount. For investors focused on short-term rental cash flow specifically, Brooklyn is a non-starter because of Local Law 18, and capital is better deployed in permissive upstate markets.

These are borough-level medians. Individual Brooklyn neighborhoods diverge significantly, and within each ZIP the mix of apartments versus houses and bedroom counts shifts the numbers further. Explore rental data in the dashboard to see every property type, every bedroom count, and the full cost stack for any Brooklyn ZIP, including property tax at 0.6%, landlord insurance around $4,264, and management fees around 8%. For the methodology behind the rankings, see the market score methodology and data sources. For peer markets, Queens Long-Term Rentals Yield 3.7%, Short-Term Rentals Banned covers the same question in another New York submarket, and Long Island Nets Under 1.0% on Rentals: Appreciation Must Do the Heavy Lifting looks at comparable dynamics elsewhere.

Data reflects market conditions as of April 2026.

This information is for educational purposes only and should not be considered financial or legal advice. Regulations and market conditions change frequently. Verify current rules with local authorities before making investment decisions.