Canarsie, Brooklyn
Zoning and property records for the Canarsie neighborhood.
Canarsie is Brooklyn's postwar neighborhood par excellence: 70% of its recorded buildings went up between 1945 and 1975, the median in 1960 — a single generation of construction across roughly 13,000 tax lots. Two-family homes dominate at 62% of the stock, 94% of lots are residential, and by the federal map the neighborhood registers 0% flood-zone coverage.
Canarsie: what the records show
Where brownstone Brooklyn was finished before the war, Canarsie was barely started: only 23% of its stock predates 1940. Then came the boom. Fully 70% of the neighborhood's recorded buildings date from 1945 to 1975 — the highest concentration in any neighborhood profiled on these pages — with the median house completed in 1960. The records describe a place built essentially at once, by one generation, to one pattern; construction since 2000 amounts to just 3% of the stock.
The pattern was the two-family house, and the numbers are emphatic: 62% of recorded buildings are two-family homes, another 20% one-family, with walk-up apartment buildings at 10%. By land use, 82% of lots carry one- or two-family buildings, and 94% of all lots are residential — among the purest residential compositions in the borough. Across roughly 13,000 lots the records count 28,698 units, on lot sizes as standardized as the housing: 2,200 square feet at the median and only 4,000 even at the 90th percentile. Tract development leaves a tract-shaped file.
The development ledger is wider open than the streetscape suggests. Records show 87% of lots carrying some capacity beyond what stands — the postwar builders worked below the ceilings their districts allow, and that gap persists across nearly the whole neighborhood — though the median residual of 0.4 FAR keeps the opportunity modest on any single lot, and the low-rise districts governing the area (median height on record: 2 stories, with 0% of buildings over 6 floors) frame what any of it can lawfully become.
One figure deserves careful reading: Canarsie records 0% of its lots inside the mapped federal Special Flood Hazard Area. That is a true statement about the regulatory map, and these pages will not embellish it — a mapped boundary reflects the flood sources the federal study modeled, and being outside it is a statement about insurance mandates, not a promise about water. Canarsie's neighbors on record — the East Flatbush areas, Flatlands, East New York-New Lots, Marine Park-Mill Basin-Bergen Beach, and Spring Creek-Starrett City — share the same postwar grain, and together they form the broad southeastern Brooklyn that the boom built.
Common zoning districts in Canarsie
Notable lots in Canarsie
- 9910 Seaview Avenue — R5, 1,410,820 sq ft lot, built 1950
- 8719 Avenue D — M1-1, 180,588 sq ft lot, built 2010
- 8201 Foster Avenue — M1-1, 644,732 sq ft lot, built 1967
- 254 Stanley Avenue — R5, 734,096 sq ft lot, built 1950
- 620 East 108 Street — R5, 450,000 sq ft lot, built 1951
- 10609 Flatlands Avenue — R5, 450,000 sq ft lot, built 1951
- 1871 Rockaway Parkway — R4-1, 88,000 sq ft lot, built 1961
- 2082 Rockaway Parkway — R5, 69,300 sq ft lot, built 1963
- 8103 Avenue M — R5, 119,128 sq ft lot
- 1455 East 108 Street — R5, 144,000 sq ft lot, built 1989
- 10835 Flatlands Avenue — R5, 286,120 sq ft lot, built 1951
- 757 East 103 Street — R5, 255,089 sq ft lot, built 1952
Canarsie — quick questions
- When was Canarsie built?
- Essentially in one generation: 70% of recorded buildings date from 1945 to 1975, with a median construction year of 1960. Only 23% of the stock predates 1940, and 3% has been built since 2000.
- Is Canarsie in a flood zone?
- By the federal map, 0% of Canarsie's lots sit inside the Special Flood Hazard Area. That is the regulatory fact; it governs insurance mandates and construction standards, and it is not a promise about where water can go.
- What kind of housing does Canarsie have?
- Two-family homes above all — 62% of the recorded stock, with one-family homes at 20% and walk-ups at 10%. The records count 28,698 units across roughly 13,000 lots, 94% of them residential.
- Is there development headroom in Canarsie?
- Broadly but thinly: 87% of lots record some unused capacity, with a median residual of 0.4 FAR on standardized 2,200-square-foot lots under low-rise districts. The gap exists on paper across nearly the whole neighborhood.
Look up a specific lot in Canarsie
PearlAudit resolves the governing zoning for any NYC tax lot — district, overlays, special districts — and cites the Zoning Resolution section behind every rule claim.
Neighborhood and parcel data: NYC municipal records (Department of City Planning). See our sources and methodology. Data as of 2026-07-11.