208 Midwood Sells for $995,000

A spelling crime has also been perpetrated…

Great story, Brooklynista. And BrooklynGreene, where did you find that real estate copy? Hilarious, especially “omelette-ready.” I’m going to use that to describe everything from now on.

Brooklynista… that’s awesome! Truly is. By the way, I hope you didn’t think I was trying to make you feel guilty about your tax rate… certainly not! Your tax rate is based on what you bought, namely a $275k house that has appreciated and the tax rate has gone up probably faster than inflation, but not as fast as the market value — that makes sense. You made this neighborhood and house your home.

Now… if you sold today for a cool million? Should the buyers get your tax rate?! My opinion, ABSOLUTELY NOT. They freely decided to pay a million bucks, they should have to pony up the taxes…. and not just the one-time “mansion tax.” But, herrumph, they heavily monied individuals get the benefit of your rate based on 1980-something and don’t add anything to the city’s coffers even though they paid a price that is double the “original” price (adjusted for inflation).

As you can imagine, I’ll probably return to this notion of tax reform in the future… given the city’s fiscal condition, I don’t think there’s a choice to do something about it (and not just by metaphorically raping the new construction and “conversions” with the FULL market value tax assessments because it’s the only time the annual cap doesn’t apply.)

Again, Brooklynista, may you live long in your home! You’re actually the type of owner that I like very very very much. You actually bought a property to *keep* — not just a glorified rental situation where you are just planning on living there for a 2 to 5 years, and then plan on cashing in on a huge profit. (i.e., bubble makers.) Oh, by the way, I don’t think you’re crazy… you’re the opposite of crazy… Now, the person that buys your house in 25 years for $9.8 million, they’re the crazy ones!!!

Well, it wasn’t until after I hit the “send” button that I wondered why the heck I chose to get personal about the differences in the PLG real estate market over the past 2 decades! 🙂 Now having done that, I guess I might as well just take it bit further. So get this: In the late 1980’s there was another major bubble going on. We were living in Harlem at the time and wanted to stay there. But the bubble was so out of hand that you could not buy anything more than a total shell for $250K — even in Harlem– at that time. So, priced out of Manhattan, we turned back to Brooklyn (home borough of our very first apartment in Crown Heights).

It took us over six months of looking in several Brooklyn neighborhoods before we finally stumbled upon our house in PLG. The moment we saw it, we knew the search was over. It was a beautiful house, in move-in-condition, in a fantastic location and we made our offer almost immediately. I remember all the new neighbors being shocked at the price we paid for our house. We were pretty shocked ourselves. I also remember us leaving the closing and having only $80 to our name until the next pay day. We bought a little figurine to sit on the mantle in the rear parlor and went to brunch to celebrate! The rest we saved to buy a few groceries and transportation money until we could get our hands on our next pay checks.

It also seemed as if the day after the closing the market tanked. And it stayed tanked for another 10 years! Indeed, if we had tried to sell our house anywhere during the 10 year period immediately following our purchase, we would have sold at a loss. Plus, it was damn hard managing that note each month but we hung in there, putting off on renovations and anything other than most essential home improvements for longer than I would ever care to admit.

So, keeping it real, and I repeat — 20+ years later, we’re damn glad to have seen our investment pay off! And hell no, we don’t feel guilty about the tax rate we’re paying. (It’s still a hard nut to crack!) Say what you will about PLG, but we love it and feel that our neighborhood is getting better with each passing day.

Bottom line is that we bought here at a time when very few who are now posting to this blog even knew the name of the nabe or where it was located, much less seriously considered living here. And, of course, that same kind of attitude about PLG back then is still evident among some posters here today. IOW, you would have called us “crazy” to pay what we paid to be here in the late 80’s just like you will call some of us “crazy” who choose PLG today. Whatever. We’re still holding on our bet and grinning. 🙂