The New York Times took a look at Bedford-Stuyvesant this weekend as an area once considered one of the roughest in the city, but one with a rich cultural history where you can now smell gentrification in the air, mainly via the fragrance of higher-end retail. More interesting than the article’s notes on gentrification is how it touches on current home values in Bed-Stuy: “‘We’re actually experiencing a little bit of a depression,’ said Tanya Blackwood, owner of Location Location Location, a real estate agency. ‘We’re back to where people are undervaluing houses—it’s just bananas.’ The neighborhood’s size makes it difficult to narrow down a price range for houses, but livable two-families generally start around $600,000, said Keith Mack of the Corcoran Group. A house in great shape, he said, might fetch $875,000. (Houses in the historic district still command a little more, but there are very few listed.) A perusal of Web sites like PropertyShark.com shows houses trading at or below $600,000. ‘I could’ve given you a general price point a year ago,’ said Lakeisha Edwards, a broker at Prudential Douglas Elliman. ‘But it’s now really property by property; in between those are so many short sales and foreclosures.’” Agree?
History, With Hipper Retailing in Bed-Suy [NY Times]
Photos by nvrlowdown