House of the Day: 158 St. John's Place
The four-story brownstone at 158 St. John’s Place is a classic North Slope winner that we suspect will generate plenty of interest at the asking price of $2,850,000. The listing says the house needs work, but the living and bedrooms all look pretty sweet to us! Killer mahagony wood work and parquet floors. We suspect…
The four-story brownstone at 158 St. John’s Place is a classic North Slope winner that we suspect will generate plenty of interest at the asking price of $2,850,000. The listing says the house needs work, but the living and bedrooms all look pretty sweet to us! Killer mahagony wood work and parquet floors. We suspect that the kitchen, bathrooms and mechanics of the house are where the reno dollars will have to be focused. Anyone have more details on the condition of that stuff? There’s an open house coming up this Sunday for those in the $3 million bracket.
158 St. John’s Place [Douglas Elliman] GMAP P*Shark
Does the price include the services of Lurch, the butler?
1:58PM
Thanks now we can all conclude you are completely on drugs.
You know 9:44, I’m with you as far as complaining about prices that have been driven up too high, but at the same time, I must say, renovation is expensive. We’ve been looking at much more modest houses – in the range of 1.3-1.5 and they’ve all needed work. We are aiming for a simple, clean renovation – nothing fancy – and even with that in mind, the bids are expensive. It’s sadly incredibly easy to spend $200K on much less space than this house, with much less work. So estimating $500K for this size house, with all the detail that you’d want to preserve (and preserving detail is always more expensive than just truly gutting and not worrying about saving stuff), does not seem so off the mark to me – in fact, it could be low. I still think the owner is nuts though – this is not even in a good school district, and there are much nicer homes in District 15 for less than what this will be when done.
Everyone that says it will take 500k plus to renovate/restore these homes are simply morons who the contractors/electricians etc are preying on -it’s you are uping the prices. IT DOES NOT REQUIRE YOU TO PAY THIS MUCH TO UPGRADE A HOME. You’re morons, idiots who have been ripped off and are driving the prices up. STOP IT!
I can corroborate 8:35’s story. I was also told the owner was inflexible on the price. He doesn’t live there anymore, he’s retired and moved on. Another broker told me he was trying to talk some sense into the owner, and asked if I’d like to make a lower offer. I think they were hoping many people coming in at low offers would convince the owner that he wasn’t going to fetch his price.
This house is overpriced, and even the current broker knows that–hence her listing comment about how “two parties might buy it together”! Have you ever seen that in a listing??
What always amazes me about stories like 8:35 shared with us, is how the seller thinks it’s better to just let the house sit unsold for a year and keep paying taxes and who knows what else on it, while refusing to take perhaps say, $2.3 million for the house. When he could have had $2.3 million earning income for him in investments. Right now the thing is sitting there earning him nothing. As for the “details” well yeah sure they’re pretty, but they’re cookie-cutter brownstone details, sorry. They’re not particularly unique like one finds in a truly special house by a significant architect. You can find these details in any number of houses and not have to overpay for them either.
I saw this house when it was re-listed with Townsley and Gay late this past summer. The broker at the time said he was a friend of the owner. He told me the owner is holding out for his $2.8million because he thinks the detail (“goth” describes it well) in the house is worth that money. When I told the broker that totally renovated brownstones very close by had sold for about the same, the broker responded that the owner was aware of that and thinks the detail is worth more than a renovated place. I disagree when you’re talking about close to $3million, but others may not.
The broker told me anyone who showed any interest in the house was thinking more in the $2million range. I got the sense the broker agreed that the place was way over-priced, which could explain why he’s no longer listing the place. The place needs sooo much work. If I recall correctly, it had been broken up into apartments/studios and was in quite a state of disrepair. The owner lives in a part of the house (garden floor, I think) and he was also renting a room upstairs and use of a bathroom to a woman. The photos don’t look anything like the real thing — unless someone has really cleaned it up since I was inside. My feeling is, anyone in that price range is going to want to do a very high end renovation/restoration. $500K is on the low side, I believe. All in, it would end up being one of the most expensive houses in the North Slope, that’s for sure. More than I’m willing or able to spend.
We didn’t have to do it in our current house, but I have had to replace all electric and all plumbing in an old house before, and I sure as heck didn’t remove all the walls! Crazy! The house had all original, amazing plaster walls with curved ceilings. I would never remove that and never even had to consider it. Both the electrician and plumber replaced everything by only knocking some holes in walls then plastering them back up again.
Those here saying you have to do a “gut job” to replace plumbing and electric are newbie first-timers totally new to renovating, and in their naivete have been taken for a ride by the contractors who insisted they had to do “gut jobs” on their houses.
Late comment per 1:47 above and “gut reno” —
No that would be relatively easy. The issue (and I have no personal knowledge here) is that if (big if) the plumbing, electrical, etc. have not been touched in a long time and needs serious updating or replacement, it is much harder to to do that kind of work while preserving the details than if you were gutting anyway. You want minimum damage to the original detail, and you try to do all that mechanical stuff without opening the walls very much. If that’s what’s needed here, it could be quite difficult and costly. If it’s just the finish that needs rehabilitation, then that’s not too bad for someone who can afford the house.