Rent-Stabilized Rentals Reborn as Condos in Park Slope
Four former rent-stabilized apartments in a pretty Park Slope apartment house have just hit the market as condos. The one-bedrooms at 19 St. Johns Place range from 601 to 666 square feet and are priced from $631,000 to $732,000. For those of you keeping score at home, that shakes out to roughly $1,049 per square…
Four former rent-stabilized apartments in a pretty Park Slope apartment house have just hit the market as condos. The one-bedrooms at 19 St. Johns Place range from 601 to 666 square feet and are priced from $631,000 to $732,000. For those of you keeping score at home, that shakes out to roughly $1,049 per square foot.
The priciest apartment, Unit 4B, has been upgraded with new cabinets, a new bathroom and stainless steel appliances, as well as an open plan kitchen/living room. It also comes with roof rights. The rest of the apartments have more traditional layouts, with separate kitchens, standard white appliances and white cabinets. A fifth condo will go on sale in the spring, according to the broker. (Some of the units “were briefly on the market in 2010,” he added.)
The four-story turn-of-the-century building has eight units, three of which are still occupied by rent-stabilized tenants. Do you think these condos sound attractive?
19 St. Johns Place [Corcoran] GMAP
This kind of Condo “conversion” really scares me. Not only for the naive people that may buy it but for the neighboring buildings as well, they can often end up as eye sores due to lack of maintenance.
This building has had no infrastructure capital improvements; updating plumbing risers, electrical service etc. as far as I can see in the public records. The boiler has only had an oil to gas conversion, not even new equipment there! And there are far too many outstanding HPD violations that shows really poor management of even the condo conversion, I am hoping that the issues do not still actually exist, that they are waiting a re-inspection, but why start the process before this basic thing is cleared off the records?.
But all that aside, there is clearly no incentive to build reserves for future capital improvement/replacements when the sponsor is still carrying half the building with rent stabilized tenants at presumably below market rents.
Any seriously responsible sponsor would have updated all the plumbing, wiring, boilers etc upfront not only to set the new home owners up with a solid start, but also to get the capital improvement increases on his/her rent stabilized rents.
Any buyer will really need to hold their breath that they will be able to re-sell if/when they need to, not only because of the physical condition/maintenance of the building, but will there be enough owner occupants for a Bank to finance the re-sale? This of course is question in all condo re-sales, but this one is starting out far behind the start line.
And of course as many others have pointed out, the prices are way too high. Not only comparing what else is available on the market at this time, but also the effective price of living in a condo should not be more than the concurrent market rental value. Pricing is off no matter which way you look at it.
Yikes . . .
Corcoran is really pushing the sleaze envelope here. Are there people dumb enough to believe that a studio apartment is a one bedroom, just because that’s what the ad says? I have to tip my hat to the gall of the developer too, for (presumably deliberately) putting in the worst kitchens in New York.
Maybe it all goes right along with it being a developer who pushed out rent stabilized tenants to go condo. Or bought them out, rather. The cost of that being passed along to the condo buyers.
A bank appraiser will not count a room without a window as a bedroom. so the apartment will have to comp out with studios…..it is not a legal bedroom
Only one of the apartments has a skylight. The others are really 2-room studios.
Do any of these have skylights? They are not shown on the floor plans.
Truly awful kitchens and baths. It’s so wasteful for the developer to install kitchens they know full well will be ripped out immediately. It’s just to fulfill the requirement by lenders to have a “kitchen” in a property one is buying. It would make me scared of the condition of the building’s mechanicals seeing the lack of investment in the kitchens.