Brooklyn Home Remodeling Contractor

What that means for a remodel

• Old walls and floors: plaster walls, old wiring and uneven floors are common in older buildings, so the scope should allow for conditions found during demolition. See renovating an older Brooklyn house.
• Lead and asbestos: For paid work that disturbs paint in housing built before 1978, EPA lead-safe rules apply. NYC Local Law 1 of 2004 also requires owners of rental units in buildings built before 1960 to presume lead-based paint is present. Before work that could disturb suspect materials, NYC requires an asbestos survey by a DEP-certified investigator.
• Narrow attached houses: shared walls and tight access affect material delivery, debris removal and where new plumbing can run.
• Owner-occupied two- to four-unit buildings: work on one unit can affect the others' water, heat and power, so shutoffs need planning.

Neighborhood names and landmark status

A Brooklyn neighborhood name does not change who issues building permits: that is the NYC Department of Buildings everywhere in the borough. What does change from one block to the next is landmark designation. The Landmarks Preservation Commission says to search the address on its Discover NYC Landmarks map. If a property is designated, an LPC application and permit are needed before the Department of Buildings can act on the DOB application.

For interior work in a designated building, LPC's permit page says an LPC permit is required when the work needs a DOB permit, when it affects the exterior (for example HVAC louvers and vents), or when it affects a designated interior. Exterior work needs an LPC permit even without a DOB permit.

LPC's historic-district dataset (accessed 2026-11-08) lists these Brooklyn historic districts: Albemarle-Kenmore Terraces, Alice and Agate Courts, Bay Ridge Parkway-Doctors' Row, Bedford, Beverley Square West, Boerum Hill, Borough Hall Skyscraper, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn Heights, Carroll Gardens, Central Sunset Park, Chester Court, Clinton Hill, Cobble Hill (and its extension), Crown Heights North (I, II and III), Ditmas Park, Ditmas Park West, DUMBO, East 25th Street, Eberhard Faber Pencil Company, Fillmore Place, Fiske Terrace-Midwood Park, Fort Greene, Fulton Ferry, Greenpoint, Linden Street, Melrose Parkside, Ocean on the Park, Park Place, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Prospect Park South, Stuyvesant Heights, Sunset Park 50th Street, Sunset Park North, Sunset Park South, Wallabout and Willoughby-Hart. A district can be a single block, so the address search, not the neighborhood name, is what decides.

Neighborhood snapshots at NTA level

Borough figures above describe Brooklyn as a whole. For the neighborhoods researched for this plan, the city's PLUTO tax-lot file gives a closer view. The figures are for DCP's neighborhood tabulation areas (NTAs). An NTA is a group of census tracts that approximates a neighborhood. Its name and edges are not official boundaries.

In Dyker Heights, about 72% of lots with homes are one- or two-family houses, and walk-up buildings hold about 35% of the area's homes. No lot is flagged on either FEMA map, and none is in an LPC historic district. The general Brooklyn guidance on this page applies there, including the brief below. In the Marine Park NTA, by contrast, the 2015 preliminary flood map flags far more lots than the 2007 map (2,572 against 398). A flag means only that part of a lot touches the mapped floodplain, so check the exact address.

Manhattan Beach is covered here. DCP's statistical area for it also contains Sheepshead Bay and Gerritsen Beach. In that area, 66.5% of lots with homes are flagged on FEMA's 2015 preliminary map, against 16.6% on the 2007 map, and no lot is in an LPC historic district. Those figures describe the whole area, not Manhattan Beach alone. A flag means only that part of a lot touches the mapped floodplain, so check the exact address on both maps. The Gerritsen Beach blocks are also mapped in a special coastal zoning district, which has its own page.

Neighborhood pages and what this page covers

Separate pages exist for Bay Ridge, covering house versus apartment-building projects and the Doctors' Row historic district; Marine Park, covering flood maps and basement planning; Flatbush, covering its six historic districts of free-standing houses; Park Slope, covering its three historic-district designations and why a building's unit count matters; Brooklyn Heights, covering the city's first historic district and its co-op buildings; and Gerritsen Beach, covering its special coastal zoning and flood rules. Dyker Heights is covered here. It shares a community district with Bay Ridge, has the same permit authority, has no lots with homes in an LPC historic district or on either flood map, and its checks are the same as Bay Ridge's.