The un-Flipper of Carroll Gardens

Architect-turned-developer Alex Barrett is not your everyday developer: His firm buys historic buildings and renovates them to a high design aesthetic that appeals to buyers in neighborhoods such as Carroll Gardens. He grew up in Park Slope and moved to Carroll Gardens in 2004. “As a designer walking the neighborhood and seeing some of the small-scale development being done, I was thinking it could be done a little better,” he said at the Brooklyn Historical Society’s Real Estate Roundtable Tuesday. (Click through for details on how he does it and more photos.) The hardest part of the job is acquiring the properties, he said, since developers are bidding against future homeowners who are less concerned about costs and have a longer investment horizon. Barrett Design and Development LLC has developed six properties in Carroll Gardens and will complete a seventh one in Fort Greene in Spring of 2013. On the first project, an investor and developer in California cosigned the loan. Barrett Design spends $150 to $200 per square foot on renovations, depending on the condition of the building. Selling prices averaged about $600 a square foot at first, and now are inching up to $800 and $900 per square foot, he said. The typical buyer is no longer a Manhattan transplant, but a creative professional couple, often in the design field, and already familiar with the neighborhood. “Everybody seems to be thinking about school districts,” Barrett said. He said he thought the “end loan situation” would be a problem, but buyers are paying all cash or putting 50 percent to 60 percent down. The business has changed significantly in the last year, he continued. Funding is much easier, but “finding property is incredibly competitive.” As a result, the firm’s next project is in Manhattan. “I feel we’ve been a little bit priced out of Brooklyn. Brooklyn has become so popular and there is so much heat on it right now. We found a little bit of breathing room in Manhattan,” he said.

Photo on first page before the jump shows interior shots of a brownstone at 240 Carroll Street. Above, a kitchen at 277 President Street.

Above, the restored exterior of 240 Carroll Street.

Above, a bathroom at 277 President Street.

25 Carroll Street Launches [Brownstoner]
The Hot Seat: Alex Barrett [Brownstoner]
Website Up for Condo Conversion on Fort Greene Place [Brownstoner]
Photos by Barrett Design and Development LLC