“We have a flower shop, a cute cafe down the street and a ton of hip new restaurants that have opened,” said Melody Rollins Downes, who with her husband, Quintano Downes, recently spent $1.95 million on a renovated brownstone on West 120th Street, a few doors down from Ms. Aguirre and Mr. Feazell. Before the building was renovated, “it was a crack house and the basement level was a gambling spot,” she said. “But now, this whole block has been transformed and there is really a great vibe up here.”

Norman Horowitz, an executive vice president of Halstead Property who has sold several hundred properties over the last decade in Harlem, said, “Harlem was gentrifying before the recession, then there was a pause, and now the trend is picking up again.”

Some experts caution, however, that a Harlem recovery could be destabilized if a backlog of foreclosed or distressed properties went on the market. While figures are hard to come by, “there is a lot of hidden inventory, where banks are just holding on to these units, but have yet to put them up for sale,” said Willie Suggs, a well-known Harlem broker.

The supply of properties for sale has tightened for several reasons, brokers say. For one, condos built in the boom were more affordable to start with — usually around $1,000 per square foot and under — so deep price cuts on top of that ensured that many of the units were steadily, if slowly, bought up. Low interest rates and federal incentives also helped bolster sales.

The recession nearly turned off the financing spigot for new projects, and even now, with banks starting to lend again, developers are thinking twice before jumping back in the ring. Finally, when the market collapsed, some condominiums were converted to rentals.

At the Sedona, an 11-unit condominium at 346 East 119th Street, for example, just one apartment remains for sale. Three recent sales had multiple bids, said David Daniels, a vice president of Corcoran who represents the building. Unit 3A sold for $365,000, just $5,000 shy of the asking price, and 4A closed at $382,00, only $3,000 below asking. Unit 5A is now in contract for close to its asking price of $425,000 — even after a $15,000 increase in February.

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Some developers are raising prices. This month, for example, Fifth on the Park, a 28-story brick-and-glass condominium at 120th Street and Fifth Avenue at Marcus Garvey Park, increased the price on many of its units, including No. 13C, a three-bedroom two-bath, by $10,000, to $953,000; and No. 19C, also a three-bedroom two-bath, by $16,000, to $959,000.