Real Estate's Busy Season Brings New Names for Brooklyn Neighborhoods

If you were house hunting, and a real estate agent wanted to show you a place in the CarGo Triangle, would you know what neighborhood he or she was talking about? How about Slopebottom or Greenwood Village?

In the grand tradition of such creatively named Brooklyn neighborhoods as Dumbo and BoCoCa, real estate agents have coined at least five new names for neighborhoods across the borough.

“There are some great properties in areas that sit on the border of two neighborhoods, or areas that don’t even have a name,” says broker Jean Reynard, founder of Kensington-based real estate firm Reynard Properties. “And then there are other neighborhoods that are just badly in need of rebranding.”

As the 2016 real estate season kicked into high gear, Brownstoner sifted through hundreds of listings in search of new names for old neighborhoods. Following are some of our favorites.

CarGo Triangle

A portmanteau of Carroll Gardens and Gowanus, CarGo Triangle describes the area of Carroll Gardens between 4th Place and the BQE close to the Gowanus Canal.

Greenwood Village

According to Google Maps, the neighborhood to the southeast of Green-Wood Cemetery between Greenwood, Kensington, Borough Park, and Windsor Terrace is currently a no-man’s land without a name, so an enterprising real estate agent gave it a new one.

Slopebottom

This little sliver — the stretch of 4th Avenue between Atlantic and Prospect avenues, to be exact — gets its name from the local terrain. It is literally at the bottom of Park Slope’s slope.

Wegmansville

Not many people know this area between the BQE and the Navy Yard is part of historic Wallabout. It probably makes much more sense to name it after the much-anticipated supermarket coming to the area in 2018.

Bushwick Heights

This one is easy to remember and simple to grasp. Bushwick Heights is the area otherwise known as Ridgewood. In Queens.

Not all real estate professionals embrace these new names. Some, such as Prospect Lefferts Gardens-based developer Karl Poisson, have chosen to embrace older names. Faced with the tangle of neighborhoods such as West Midwood and Caton Park in what used to be called simply Flatbush, Poisson markets his properties using the historic names.

“Millennials appreciate authenticity,” says Poisson. “That’s why I say all of my properties are in Vlacke bos.”

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