A snazzy name can make a world of difference, as any real estate professional will tell you. Many brokers have added another task to their jobs: giving lower-priced neighborhoods new labels in an effort to boost sales or development – an effective if not novel tactic.

An area that had been considered part of the Lower East Side was rebranded as the East Village, after which real estate values rocketed up. Likewise with NoLita, a smidgen of Little Italy that saw commercial property values rise to more than $300, from $75 a square foot in the 1990s, after it was re-branded, the chairman of the retail leasing and sales division of Prudential Douglas Elliman, Faith Hope Consolo, said. One of the easiest ways to sanitize the reputation of a neighborhood with a somewhat questionable reputation – or to give a stagnant neighborhood some much-needed buzz – is to rename it.

“I’ve come up with a lot of names,” Ms. Consolo said. “In retail real estate, it’s very important to brand the neighborhood. Now, for example, we’ve got SoHo, NoHo, LoBro. A name helps to establish shopping districts, and after it’s branded, rental rates usually shoot up. It becomes sought-after real estate.”

(For the uninitiated, NoHo refers to north of Houston, and LoBro is for lower Broadway.)

Sometimes it’s easier to lump an up-and-coming neighborhood with an already established name, though. In recent years, after demand for Williamsburg real estate boomed, brokers started using the name “East Williamsburg” for properties in Bushwick, which borders the uber hip, pricier Williamsburg. The result: People who wouldn’t normally consider Bushwick are giving “East Williamsburg” a chance.

A real estate agent who has listings in Bushwick and East Williamsburg, Nick Jones, says he receives plenty of calls from people who are open to the idea of living in Williamsburg but may not be keen on living in Bushwick. Still, they end up taking apartments either on the border or in areas that are technically part of Bushwick.

“Some people wouldn’t live on a particular block if they knew it was in Bushwick, but they’re buying into a community and a sense of safety,” Mr. Jones says.

Pricewise, the actual neighborhood makes quite a difference. A two-bedroom apartment in Bushwick might rent for about $1,300, but the same apartment in the center of Williamsburg (at the Bedford Avenue or Lorimer subway stops on the L train), might rent for between $2,000 and $3,000, Mr. Jones said.

Brooklyn is not the only place where borders are getting blurred, though. Apartments in East Harlem, for example, where property values are rapidly catching up to Manhattan prices, are often marketed as “Upper East Side.” A broker with Citi Habitats, Robin Davenport, described an East Harlem listing on 100th Street as an apartment in the “hot-upcoming neighborhood of UPPER East side which nears 96 street. Won’t last!!”

“I always tell people exactly where the apartment is, and they can decide for themselves,” Ms. Davenport says. “It’s how our listings are entered in our database. It’s entered as an Upper East Side listing.”

Apartment hunters may see a bargain in an “Upper East Side” apartment listing with rents closer to offerings in Harlem, especially considering the average price in East Harlem was $350 a square foot last year, compared to $768 a square foot for a co-op on the Upper East Side during the same time period, according to a Prudential Douglas Elliman Manhattan market report.

Some brokers, however, say name inflation is unnecessary in today’s market, since there is voracious demand for real estate throughout the city, almost regardless of neighborhood.

“When the market is in favor of growing neighborhoods, you should be proud of it,” a senior vice president of the Corcoran Group, Jerry Minsky, said. “I’m not going to say something is ‘prime Williamsburg real estate’ if it’s in Bushwick. When the market is slow, you may need to resort to various tactics. It’s always more difficult to sell cheap property in up-and-coming neighborhoods when it’s slow, but this is one of those times when you can proudly advertise something in an up-and-coming neighborhood.

“Back in the 1980s, I came into the industry on the heels of a broker who used to market Fort Greene real estate as ‘Brooklyn Heights.’ I was young, and I said, ‘This isn’t Brooklyn Heights. It’s Fort Greene, damnit!’ “

If Mr. Minsky had been more concerned with marketing and branding, though, he might have renamed it Vert de Fort.