Brooklyn Booms as Record Rents Drive Construction: Mortgages

Since Douglas Steiner transformed the Brooklyn Navy Yard into Hollywood-style studios in 2004, productions from “American Gangster” to “Boardwalk Empire” have been filmed there. The New Jersey native says he’d have been better off if he’d focused instead on buying and building properties in New York’s most populous borough.

Steiner, 51, plans to break ground on his latest residential project in 2013, 720 units in downtown Brooklyn, to benefit from rents that have risen 9 percent in the past year. He already bought a 44-unit rental property in the Williamsburg neighborhood this year for $38 million, and has two other buildings in the area he plans to renovate.