House of the Day: A Grand Bed Stuy Brownstone With Four Apartments
Today’s pick is a stately 20-foot brownstone with bay windows, on a nice block of Bedford Stuyvesant near the edge of Clinton Hill. It’s not swimming in detail, but there’s some to go around: moldings aplenty, a trio of white marble fireplaces, and, awesomely, etched glass in the front entrance doors. The floors, less awesomely,…
Today’s pick is a stately 20-foot brownstone with bay windows, on a nice block of Bedford Stuyvesant near the edge of Clinton Hill.
It’s not swimming in detail, but there’s some to go around: moldings aplenty, a trio of white marble fireplaces, and, awesomely, etched glass in the front entrance doors. The floors, less awesomely, don’t appear to be original.
The house is set up with an apartment on each of its four floors, each one with a slightly different layout. All have one bedroom (though on the ground level only the living room in the front would be a legal bedroom, not the “den” in the middle).
The top two floors are called two-bedrooms in the listing, but the layout shows a bedroom plus a small room, again called a den, in each, 6.5Â feet wide. Â Consider them 1.5-bedrooms.
The most obvious move here would be to duplex the bottom two floors and keep the rentals above. It’s no minor project, but it looks like it’d be doable enough.
All appears to be in decent shape from the photos, though the kitchen and bathroom pictured could both use an upgrade. The mechanicals are in “good shape,” according to the listing, from Patricia Laligant at Corcoran.
Transportation-wise, you’ve got the Franklin Avenue C and shuttle stop around the corner.
The house is listed for $2,150,000. Does that seem like a fair price? What do you make of the place?
47 Jefferson Avenue [Corcoran] GMAP
Photos by Corcoran
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Not sure if you are in the loop of prices in Clinton Hill, Prospect Height and Park Slope, similar houses like this one in those areas will be close to 3 millions and up. Do you actually live in NYC?
There are no projects close to that area of Bed-Stuy.
Sounds like you’re just out of touch with your money. But good luck with that!
Okay buddy if it’s such a hell of a deal put your money where you mouth is and buy it.
Your idea of affordable rent for the area can be found in much better areas of brooklyn, and even upper manhattan.
FWIW I’ve lived in bedstuy, clinton hill, ft greene, bk heights, dumbo, and finally flatbush (right near bk college). I’ve been in BK for about 20 years and know about the restuarants that occupied spaces prior to your trendy coffee bars, shishi bodegas, and artisinal bread shops.
Your friends are moving to bed stuy because they are getting priced out. But moving into a zone with significantly more projects and a higher crime rate is dumb, oh well birds of a feather flock together – I guess that’s why you’re friends.
Fully detached house, trolling CL for rents, sound like you live in Marine Park. That’s prob why your so out of touch with the prices in Northern Bk. “Bad business plan” he says, these are all end users that live here, and can afford to pay a $4k monthly nut. When did everyone decide living for free is the onyl good investment? My brother lives in long island and pays $35k/year in taxes its all about what lifestyle you want and right now people want to be on these blocks, so your idea about money being better spent in other locations is purely preference. Most of my friends who live in Ft. Greene and moving to Bedstuy.
Edit – Excuse me, it does look like a newish fridge and oven, but they do look cheap.
An investment property is any property other than a sfh as far as a bank is concerned. If you need rental income to cover your costs, it’s an investment property and as such won’t qualify for traditional financing. You’ll pay a higher interest rate on this.
600/mo for insurance on this place would be cheap. You have to cover the cost to replace the entire 2.2m dollar building plus any damages to other structures it’s attached to. My own house is fully detatched, $1m+ costs about 350/mo.
As for your FYI, here’s an FYI – if CL is advertising cheaper listings in the area, you can ask whatever you want to ask but be aware you aren’t competitive. Claiming something is worth 20% more than other listings on the market means it needs to be worth 20% more. These units look like they’re between 15-20 years old. Expect to pay some grip since the bathrooms and kitchens are the most expensive in a house (outside of full utility replacements).
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It’s a nice looking house, but finances are crap. At absolute best it’s below breakeven when taking into account utility costs/taxes (but rent covering mortgage costs) with the hope of home appreciation. That’s a recipe for a bad business plan. A more likely scenario is that this place runs negative for half a dozen years and the owner fed up decides to sell without renovating anything because they overpaid. If you can’t run positive numbers on your rent roll then you shouldn’t buy.
That doesn’t mean the price is a deal. Just look somewhere else for something nicer, there are a dozen different neighborhoods where 2m would be better spent.
Clinton hill, ft greene, prospect heights, bk heights, park slope, windsor terrace, ditmas park etc..