House of the Day: 154 Hicks Street
This large Neo-Grec brownstone with SRO issues has been on and off the market for years. Now it’s back, and these magic words have appeared in the listing: “this property will be delivered vacant, with approved plans and a Certificate of No Harassment.” It’s in estate condition and will need a lot of work, but…
This large Neo-Grec brownstone with SRO issues has been on and off the market for years. Now it’s back, and these magic words have appeared in the listing: “this property will be delivered vacant, with approved plans and a Certificate of No Harassment.”
It’s in estate condition and will need a lot of work, but it has good bones and could be very elegant when finished. The exterior in particular is charming, and the rooms are grand with quite a few original details. It was a House of the Day in 2013.
Do you think it’s an attractive proposition, for an ask of $6,250,000?
154 Hicks Street [Douglas Elliman] GMAP
Photos by Douglas Elliman
It will need an elevator.
But for a long time end user it may be worth it to design and build your own quality space. Compared to the high end Condos in the area, this would be a better buy for many wanting privacy.
The width when you have full width rooms and an extra deep building are equal to wider houses, when all is said and done.
I agree with these comments. This house is totally over priced! A narrow house is less desirable, even if it has 5 stories. Reno on this place is at least $1.5/2 M if done nicely, making that house close to $8m. Crazy-town indeed!
Actually, even taking into account a $1-1.5 million renovation, that still gets you a new single family brownstone on one of the best blocks in Brooklyn Heights for under $8 million. As crazy as this sounds, that’s not so crazy.
Let’s not carried away here. This is a 5-story house that was used as SRO for years. When even the broker writes in the listing “This home needs a total rehab” you know it’s in really bad shape. No way your’re doing the reno close to $1 million and even $1.5 is pushing it, realistically assuming that anyone paying multi-millions for the house will also do a high-end renovation. According to city records the house is 4300 sf (seems to match the floorplans)…easy to imagine the rehab costs for that type of buyer are $2 million.
Now on to other facts. You can count on one hand the number of houses in Brooklyn Heights that have ever sold north of $8 million. Lots have asked but few have actually sold. Even with high-end reno, this narrow house wouldn’t be one of them. And last year, the average selling price of houses was about $1400 psf. Even if you assume post-reno that the house is at a premium to the average, hard to fathom how it could be worth more than $7 mil even all prettied up, which means the price is at least $1.5 million dollars too high — and that just gets you to break-even after a 12-18 month gut construction project. Labor of love if you have the money…
Flipper’s delight. The house sold for $1.699 mil 18 months ago, and $3.2 mil 6 months ago. Now, I know getting the Certificate of Non-Harassment is worth its weight in gold, but still…hello, crazy-town.
The “standard” lot width in Brooklyn Heights is 25 feet. Even with a typical stair and hallway, the parlors are as wide or wider than this entire house.