Times Finds Value, Community in Canarsie

The New York Times took a look at Canarsie as a place to live and discovered a close-knit, diverse community with affordable homes. One- and two-family homes range from $350,000 to $600,000. The prices are still off their 2007 highs, when a two-family cost $450,000 to $725,000, thanks to the twin blows of the mortgage crisis and Hurricane Sandy.

“The mortgage crisis is only getting worse in Canarsie, and it’s been exacerbated by Sandy,” Angella Davidson, who manages the foreclosure prevention program of the nonprofit Neighborhood Housing Services of East Flatbush, told the Times. “People who already were struggling to pay their mortgage are now falling further behind, because they’re using money that should be earmarked for their mortgage to replace boilers and Sheetrock. And Sandy has forced people who were not in foreclosure to face potential foreclosure.”

Many residents faced two to three feet of flooding in their basements, and much of the damage isn’t covered by insurance. And to make matters worse, 10 percent of small homes (one- to four-unit properties) were in foreclosure in Canarsie as of June, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

But Canarsie brokers feel like the market is beginning to pick up there, based on the number of sales.  “Canarsie has not recovered much from the mortgage crisis,” Jean-Paul Ho, broker-owner of Brooklyn Real Property, said, “but you can feel it in the volume of transactions. Nothing was selling last year, but now the activity is there.”

Living in: In Canarsie, a Coalition of the Tried-and-True [NY Times]
Photo by Paul Lowry