Four new-building permit applications hit Brooklyn's DOB filings in the space of about a week, and stacked together they tell you where the borough's residential appetite is pointed: Crown Heights, Downtown Brooklyn, Gravesend, and East New York, all at once.

The particulars, per each filing: 1027 Dean Street in Crown Heights — owner Shimon Brach, architect Yoel Rozenberg of Jay Architect & Engineering — an 8-story, 92-foot, 133,258-square-foot mixed-use building with 170 units, concrete construction, no accessory parking (newyorkyimby.com/2026/08/permits-filed-for-1027-dean-street-in-crown-heights-brooklyn.html). Downtown Brooklyn's the big one: developer Shimon Klein filed for three 27-story towers across 147 and 149 Lawrence Street and 485 Fulton Street, 297 units and 317,498 square feet total, per The Real Deal's weekly permit roundup (therealdeal.com/new-york/2026/08/19/new-york-citys-top-construction-permits-aug-14-2026). In Gravesend, Joel Landau's Emerald Developers filed for a 10-story, 102,090-square-foot building at 101 Lake Street with 55 apartments, same TRD roundup. And in East New York, owner Balkar Singh of Royabi Design Inc. filed for a 7-story, 65-foot, steel-frame building at 320 Essex Street (also known as 742 Liberty Avenue) — 40 rental units, architect Muzaffar Jamal of Architectural Concept (newyorkyimby.com/2026/08/permits-filed-for-320-essex-street-in-east-new-york-brooklyn.html).

“Filing stage is the cheapest time to get your name in front of an owner — before the job goes to competitive bid and everybody's calling the same three numbers.”

Add the unit counts and you get roughly 562 apartments now sitting in DOB's filing queue across four Brooklyn neighborhoods. None of them has a GC of record yet — these are all filing-stage permits, which means the paperwork is public but the bid package isn't written.

That's the window. Filing stage is the cheapest time to get your name in front of an owner or architect, before the job goes to competitive bid and everybody's calling the same three numbers. All four owner and architect teams are named in the public filings — any sub with Brooklyn residential experience should be reaching out now, not waiting for a DOB NOW update to show a GC assigned.

Nobody's picked a contractor on any of these four jobs. That's not a gap in our data — that's just where the paperwork sits right now. But in a market this active, it won't stay open long.