By Frederic Sandy, Licensed Real Estate Broker & Owner, Orion Homes Realty
I remember the first time I drove down 69th Avenue and thought — this is it. This is the street. This is where I want to raise my family.
It was 2007. The housing market was at its peak, though none of us knew what was coming just around the corner. Forest Hills felt established, a little quiet, and genuinely beautiful in the way that only neighborhoods with old trees and older buildings can be. I wasn’t a real estate broker yet. I was just a person looking for a home — the same as the buyers I work with today.
Nearly two decades later, I’m still here. My family is still here. My business is here. And the neighborhood, while unmistakably the same place I fell in love with, has changed in ways that I find myself thinking about often — as a resident, as a father, as someone who has watched this community evolve in real time from a front-row seat.
This isn’t a market report. There are plenty of those. This is something more personal — an honest account of what Forest Hills looked like when I arrived, what it looks like now, and what I believe that means for the people who are thinking about making it their home today.
What Forest Hills Looked Like in 2007
When my family arrived, Forest Hills was already considered a desirable neighborhood. It had its reputation — the Gardens, the transit, the schools, the prewar buildings with the kind of bones that newer construction simply cannot replicate. But it wore that reputation quietly. It wasn’t a neighborhood that needed to announce itself.
Austin Street was functional and familiar but noticeably different from what it is today. There were more long-standing local businesses that had been there for thirty or forty years — the kind of places where the owner knew your order and your name and probably your kids’ names too. The restaurant options were solid but limited by today’s standards. The foot traffic was steady but not remarkable.
The housing market reflected that quiet confidence. COOP prices were strong but not stratospheric. A well-maintained two-bedroom in a good building was attainable for a middle-class family willing to navigate the board process. Single-family homes in the Gardens were already expensive by most standards, but they changed hands with some regularity. There was inventory. There were options.
The neighborhood felt, in the best possible way, like a place that didn’t need to try too hard. People who knew, knew. Everyone else walked past on the way to somewhere louder.
Then 2008 Happened
I arrived just in time to watch the financial crisis unfold from a neighborhood that, while not immune, handled it with more stability than most.
The Forest Hills housing market softened — there’s no honest way to say otherwise. Prices pulled back. Transactions slowed. Some sellers who had stretched to buy near the peak found themselves in uncomfortable positions. The COOP boards, already famously cautious about applicants’ financial profiles, became even more rigorous in their review process.
But here’s what I observed that shaped my understanding of this neighborhood as a long-term investment: Forest Hills didn’t collapse. The fundamental demand for the neighborhood — the transit, the schools, the architecture, the quality of life — didn’t evaporate because the broader market panicked. People who bought in Forest Hills in 2005 or 2006 and held through the crisis came out the other side in reasonable shape. People who bought in 2009 and 2010 when prices had softened did exceptionally well.
That experience taught me something about Forest Hills that I carry with me in every conversation I have with buyers today. This is a neighborhood with genuine intrinsic value. The things that make it desirable are not dependent on a bull market or a hot moment. They were here before 2008 and they were here after it. The trees didn’t go anywhere. The E train kept running. The Gardens looked exactly as beautiful in 2010 as they did in 2006.
Neighborhoods that hold their character through adversity are the ones worth owning in. Forest Hills held its character.
The Transformation of Austin Street
If you want to see the clearest evidence of how Forest Hills has changed since 2007, spend an afternoon on Austin Street.
The street I walk today is noticeably more vibrant than the one I walked onto when we first moved here. The restaurant scene has genuinely blossomed. Where there were once limited options for a Friday night dinner, there are now excellent choices across a range of cuisines and price points — Japanese, Mediterranean, modern American, farm-to-table spots that would hold their own in any Brooklyn neighborhood without the Brooklyn price tag or the Brooklyn attitude.
The coffee culture arrived with force. There are now multiple strong independent cafés on and around Austin Street where none existed in any meaningful way when I arrived. These aren’t chains that moved into a neighborhood — they’re places that grew with the neighborhood, that became community gathering spots, that are full on weekend mornings with the particular mix of families, freelancers, and retirees that defines Forest Hills’ demographic personality.
New businesses have come, and some beloved old ones have gone — that’s the honest truth of it. A few of the long-standing shops that felt like permanent fixtures when we arrived have closed over the years, casualties of rising commercial rents and changing retail patterns that have affected Main Streets across America, not just this one. I won’t pretend that doesn’t sting sometimes. There’s a particular kind of loss when a place that knew your name closes its doors.
But what replaced those businesses has generally been good. Austin Street today is more curated and more dynamic than it was in 2007, and the foot traffic reflects it. On a Saturday afternoon, the sidewalks are genuinely busy. New residents have arrived and made the street their own, layering new energy onto an already solid foundation.
The People — A Neighborhood Evolving
Forest Hills has always been a diverse neighborhood in the truest sense — ethnically, economically, generationally. That was true in 2007 and it remains true today, though the specific composition has shifted in ways worth acknowledging.
When we arrived, the neighborhood had a strong established population of longtime residents — many of them older, many of them in the same apartments or homes they had occupied for twenty or thirty years. The prewar COOPs along the major corridors were full of people who had arrived decades earlier and planted roots so deep that the idea of leaving had never seriously occurred to them.
That generation is gradually giving way to a newer one. Young families have been arriving in meaningful numbers throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, drawn by the school quality, the relative affordability compared to comparable Manhattan and Brooklyn neighborhoods, and the quality of life that older residents always knew about but perhaps didn’t advertise loudly enough. Remote work accelerated this trend dramatically after 2020 — when people no longer needed to minimize their commute above all other considerations, neighborhoods like Forest Hills that offer genuine livability suddenly looked even more attractive.
The result is a neighborhood in an interesting generational transition — one where longtime residents and newer arrivals coexist and, for the most part, genuinely enrich each other’s experience of the place. The older residents carry the institutional memory of the neighborhood, the knowledge of what it has always been. The newer arrivals bring energy, investment, and the particular enthusiasm of people who chose this place deliberately rather than inheriting it.
I find this transition hopeful. A neighborhood that only attracts one generation eventually stagnates. Forest Hills is attracting everyone.
What Happened to the Housing Market
The honest answer is that Forest Hills real estate has appreciated significantly since 2007, and that the trajectory has been largely upward with the exception of the 2008 dip and a period of uncertainty during the early months of the pandemic in 2020.
COOP prices that were already considered strong when we arrived look almost modest by current standards. The two-bedroom apartments that were attainable for middle-class buyers in 2007 require meaningfully more purchasing power today. This is not unique to Forest Hills — it reflects broader New York City and national housing dynamics — but it is a reality that shapes who can access the neighborhood now versus who could access it when we arrived.
The single-family home market in and around the Gardens has become particularly competitive. Inventory has always been limited — people who own detached homes in Forest Hills Gardens tend to hold them — but the demand has grown substantially. When a property in the Gardens comes to market today, it attracts serious attention quickly.
For buyers, this means that the window of relative affordability that existed in Forest Hills even five years ago has narrowed. The neighborhood is no longer the quiet secret it once was. It has been discovered — by the real estate media, by the young professional migration out of Brooklyn, by the work-from-home families who realized that 25 minutes on the LIRR is not a hardship when your commute is only two or three days a week.
For owners, it means that the decision to buy in Forest Hills — even at today’s prices — continues to look like a sound long-term judgment. The neighborhood has proven its resilience. The demand drivers are structural, not speculative.
The Halloween Tradition — What It Taught Me About Community
I want to take a moment here to talk about something personal, because this article is supposed to be personal.
In 2014, my family started what has become known around the neighborhood as the “31 Days of Halloween.” We began decorating our home at 87-23 69th Avenue on the first day of fall, turning our property into an elaborate Halloween display that the neighborhood could enjoy throughout the entire month of October — not just on the 31st.
What started as a family project has become something I genuinely did not anticipate: a neighborhood institution. People begin driving past in September to see if we’ve started. Families make it an annual pilgrimage. The Forest Hills Times has covered it. The Queens Ledger has covered it. The 112th Precinct approved a block closure for our most recent event.
I tell this story not to boast — I tell it because of what it revealed to me about Forest Hills.
The response to what we do every October is not really about Halloween decorations. It’s about a neighborhood that was hungry for exactly this kind of shared experience. It’s about people who wanted a reason to walk down a street together, to show their kids something delightful, to feel connected to the place where they live. Forest Hills has always had that impulse toward community — toward neighborliness, toward shared investment in the quality of collective life. Our little tradition just gave it a specific address.
In eighteen years here, that is the thing that has changed least and meant the most. The coffee shops come and go. The real estate market cycles. But the fundamental character of this neighborhood — its desire to be a community in the fullest sense of the word — has never wavered.
What Has Not Changed
In the interest of balance and honesty, here are the things that remain stubbornly, wonderfully the same.
The architecture. Forest Hills Gardens looks today almost exactly as it did when Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. designed it. The Tudor facades, the winding streets, the Station Square entrance — preserved with a care that borders on devotion. The prewar COOP buildings along the main corridors still have their original lobbies, their original moldings, their original sense that someone once cared deeply about what a building should feel like to live in.
The trees. This sounds small but it isn’t. The tree canopy in Forest Hills — the mature oaks and elms and maples that line the residential streets — creates a quality of light and a quality of walking experience that newer neighborhoods simply cannot manufacture. You cannot fast-forward a tree. The ones here have been growing for decades and they change the character of the neighborhood at a fundamental level.
The transit. The E train still runs express to Midtown in roughly twenty minutes. The LIRR still gets you to Penn Station faster than most people expect. These facts were true in 2007 and they remain true today, which means the core argument for Forest Hills as a commuter neighborhood has not changed at all.
The schools. Forest Hills High School is still Forest Hills High School. The elementary schools in the district still perform well. The Queens Public Library branch is still excellent. The educational infrastructure that drew families here when we arrived is still drawing them here now.
The feeling. This is the hardest one to articulate but the most important. Forest Hills still feels like a neighborhood where people know each other, look out for each other, and take genuine pride in where they live. That feeling is not decorative — it is structural. It is the product of decades of people choosing this place and then choosing to invest in it. I felt it when I arrived in 2007. I feel it every single day.
What I Would Tell Someone Considering Forest Hills Today
I would tell them what I wish someone had told me before I started looking: stop comparing it to where you are now and start imagining what your life looks like here.
The coffee shop that becomes yours. The park route you run three mornings a week. The neighbors whose names you’ll know within a month. The moment when your kid says “I love our block” and you realize that the thing you were hoping to give them — a sense of place, a sense of belonging — is actually real.
I would tell them that the prices are higher than they were when we arrived, and that the same will likely be true for the person who buys after them. That is not a reason to wait. In this neighborhood, with this transit, these schools, this architecture, and this community — waiting has historically cost more than buying.
I would tell them that Forest Hills rewards loyalty. That the people who have been here the longest are the ones who will tell you, with zero ambiguity, that they would make the same choice again.
And I would tell them that if they end up on 69th Avenue in October, they should stop by. We’ll be decorated.
Eighteen Years In
My family has changed since 2007. My kids have grown up in this neighborhood, gone to its schools, played in its parks, and become, in the fullest sense, Forest Hills people. My business — Orion Homes Realty — grew out of this neighborhood and has served it for over a decade. The community that welcomed us when we were newcomers is the same community we now try to give back to in every way we can.
Forest Hills has changed since 2007. It is more discovered, more expensive, more vibrant in some ways and quieter in others. But the thing that made me stop on 69th Avenue all those years ago and think — this is it — that thing is still here.
It will still be here when you arrive. I’m confident of that.
Come find out for yourself.
Frederic Sandy is the licensed broker and owner of Orion Homes Realty, located at 87-23 69th Avenue in Forest Hills, Queens — the same address where he has lived since 2007. He can be reached at (718) 825-1940 or at orionhomesrealty.com. If you are thinking about buying or selling in Forest Hills, he would love to talk.
