The “incredible renaissance” in the Brooklyn residential real estate market is transforming the traditionally commercial area of downtown Brooklyn.

Amid the low-end retail outlets, dentists’ offices, and courthouses that dot the neighborhood, 11 new condominiums and rental buildings — a total of 1,480 units — are welcoming their first residents.

The newcomers are a mix of Wall Street bankers attracted by the short commute to Lower Manhattan, families trading in their Brooklyn brownstones for condominiums, and 30-somethings fleeing high Manhattan prices, brokers and new residents said in interviews.

In the first two weeks of January, nearly 150 units in the neighborhood were completed and occupied by tenants, according to the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership.

“It just offered so much space for the price point,” an investment banker, Maybel Black, 32, said.

Ms. Black said she wanted to move to a bigger apartment from her one-bedroom in Murray Hill. After looking at places in the Upper East and Upper West sides, as well as more established Brooklyn neighborhoods like Park Slope, she settled on a two-bedroom with a study at BellTel Lofts, an Art Deco building, once owned by Verizon, in the final stages of a conversion.

“It’s an $8 cab ride to work, and I’m flanked by great neighborhoods: DUMBO and Brooklyn Heights on the west, and Fort Greene on the east,” she said.

Downtown Brooklyn has long been a center for commercial offices and lower-end retail, but as the neighborhoods surrounding it — such as Boerum Hill, Fort Greene, and Brooklyn Heights — have seen major resurgences, developers bought up tracts of land and began building high-rise residential buildings, the president of the partnership, Joe Chan, said.

“A lot of this has been coming off an incredible renaissance in Brooklyn’s residential real estate market,” he said. “The core area of downtown Brooklyn had a few hundred residents in 2000. Now there are enough units coming on line for tens of thousands of people.”

The average price per square foot in Brooklyn Heights is $630 a foot, while in Park Slope it is $640 a square foot, and in Fort Greene it is $414 a square foot, according to the Corcoran Group’s fourth-quarter market report. Apartments at BellTel lofts have been selling for between $500 and $700 a square foot, brokers at the building said.

Brooklyn prices are much lower than those in Manhattan, where the average price per square foot is $1,337 in the Upper East Side, $1,106 in the financial district, and $1,235 in Chelsea, according to data from Miller Samuel.

But while the real estate market has hung on so far in New York, resisting the slide affecting the rest of the country, the American economy is teetering on the edge of a recession, and real estate prices in peripheral neighborhoods are softening. If the situation worsens, some of the planned condominiums could become hotels or rentals, a broker for Heights Berkeley, Alex Maroni, said.

“The market dynamic is changing,” he said. “The 421a tax abatement is going away. Going forward, most projects will be rentals and hotels.”

Despite these worries, sales are continuing apace in downtown Brooklyn. BellTel, for example, is nearly 43% sold out after one year on the market. So far, the makeup of buyers there are 45% Manhattanites and 45% from Brooklyn; the rest are from Long Island, New Jersey, and abroad. About 30% are families, 20% work in the financial sector, and 70% are between 30 and 39 years of age.

As with many developing neighborhoods, young people are predominantly making the first moves.

Ted Honkisz, a 25-year-old paralegal, moved with his girlfriend to a two-bedroom rental at State Renaissance Court from the Lower East Side in September.

“We were originally looking at moving to Astoria or staying in the Lower East Side,” he said. “Then we found this place. It’s twice as big as what we could get in Manhattan. …

“There are definitely more trees and greenery here and it’s close to BAM,” he said, referring to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

At Oro Condominiums at 306 Gold St., a lot of the buyers are from Williamsburg, Fort Greene, and Park Slope, the sales manager for the building, Samantha Behringer, said.

Ms. Behringer said she was surprised at how many people were trading in their brownstones for the doorman lifestyle. “They are getting rid of their responsibilities and going for a more serviced environment,” she said.

Oro, which has been averaging between $750 and $775 a square foot, has a 50-foot pool, saunas, a two-story gym, racquetball and basketball courts, and a screening room.

“People moving out here want to be in on the ground floor,” the head of sales for Forte at 230 Ashland Place, David Perry, said. “They saw the upswing on the surrounding neighborhoods and they see that is going to happen in our location.”

Other buildings that have begun sales and started to allow move-ins include the more upscale One Hanson Place, near BAM; 110 Livingston; 14 Town Homes; 67 Schermerhorn, and Court and State.