Lots of Brooklyn in The Sunday Times

The Sunday Times had plenty of Brooklyn-related content this week. First up was a feature about one couple’s renovation of a three-story frame house in Williamsburg.

The couple spent more than $200,000 on a gut renovation that included opening up the warren of tiny rooms to create an inviting layout. They ripped off multiple layers of wallpaper — It was like we were seeing the history of wallpaper, Ms. Eisenman said — and pulled up floorboards to reveal strange, ancient-looking plants. When they dug out the earth in the backyard, they discovered fragments of what looked like old Dutch pottery.

Next up: The story of an art teacher who originally bought a two-bedroom co-op in Ditmas Park back on 2006 only to find that is was, well, a little boring and that she was spending all her time in Park Slope anyway. So she pulled the plug on her old place and bought a smaller apartment on Underhill Avenue in Prospect Heights instead. “I came to realize that what’s outside of my apartment was just as important as the space inside,” she said.

And finally the meatiest of the three pieces: A story about the challenges facing the high end of the Brooklyn real estate market. Back in the glory days of 2006 and 2007, when it was hard to find a townhouse south of 96th Street for less than $10 million, a $5 million house in Brooklyn Heights or Park Slope might have looked like a relative bargain, argues the article. Now, however, with Manhattan prices considerably off their highs, the top houses in Brooklyn—like 281 Henry Street, above—are having a tougher time. And, perhaps as a result, fewer of them are coming to market.