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April 12, 2006

House of the Day: Detached on Fenimore

house
We don't know the Prospect Lefferts Manor market as well as we should, especially when you move away from talking about brownstones. This free-standing wood frame house on Fenimore between Bedford and Rogers is only a couple of blocks from the park and we're sure it would make a nice single-family home. Somehow, though, we suspect that the asking price of $1.495 is aggressive for the block. The interior has certainly not been neglected--it looks like a major reno was done at some point recently. Who can clue us in about values on this block?
200 Fenimore Street [Prudential Douglas Elliman] GMAP P*Shark




Posted by Brownstoner at 11:39 AM | Comments (40)
Categories: Properties

Comments

there are photos there of the interior...click on the small 360 degree view icon right under the picture of the house and click on photo gallery.

Posted by: anon at April 12, 2006 11:54 AM

brownstoner: that sure was a quick edit of the original post...lol..

Posted by: anon at April 12, 2006 12:20 PM

It's like the five-second rule when you drop food on the floor...

Posted by: Brownstoner at April 12, 2006 1:26 PM

Seems quite overpriced. The largest and finest homes in Lefferts Manor, on the most desirable blocks, would have trouble fetching that price. Chop off at least 400K.

Posted by: Anonymous at April 12, 2006 3:02 PM

"Overpriced" being a relative term ... You could buy that house in some parts of the country for $100,000.

Posted by: Anonymous at April 12, 2006 4:07 PM

And that bathroom was probably fairly expensive and would not be my cup of tea...

Posted by: Anonymous at April 12, 2006 4:15 PM

I agree with Anon 03:02 no more than 950k. What are they thinking?

Posted by: Anonymous at April 12, 2006 4:20 PM

This house was on the LM House Tour last year. It is big and has been renovated in a way that would only please the current owner. It needs work. It is over priced. Very over priced. Agreed 950K is a good price. This person tried to sell this house once before recently for too much.

Posted by: Anonymous at April 12, 2006 5:01 PM

plg is an interesting play - if it's afffixed section of flatbush manages to attract a few gentrifier friendly businesses - a few cafes, restaurants and bars- then there is no reason the area can't balloon in value in a few years - it's steps to a rather pretty section of the park, has more subway lines in the vicinity than it knows what to do with, and has some of the most pastoral blocks in all of brooklyn - not to mention the proximity to three potentially attractive commercial stretches - bedford, rogers and nostrand - like fort greene, prospect heights and downtown at one time long ago, the area is still too gritty for a massive white incursion, but the potential is certainly there - it will be interesting to watch -

Posted by: Anonymous at April 12, 2006 6:07 PM

Anon.5:01,

Make that the PLG house tour--it's sponsored by the Lefferts Manor Assoc. but covers ALL of Prospect-Lefferts Gardens. This house, on the south side of Fenimore Street, is not in Lefferts Manor and is not covered by the LM single-family deed covenant (although it IS a single-family house). Besides being on last year's HT it was featured on a Japanese language feature on Fuji-TV. I wish I could somehow post that.

IMO this is a really lovely house--I'll be interested in seeing how much it actually sells for.

Posted by: Bob Marvin at April 12, 2006 6:10 PM

but yes, obviously, this home appears acutely overpriced -

Posted by: Anonymous at April 12, 2006 6:11 PM

Well--I couldn't possibly comment on THAT :-)

Posted by: Bob Marvin at April 12, 2006 6:13 PM

It is a really nice block, but this place is definitely way, way overpriced. I saw it on the tour last year too. Even though it is a nice house with lots of potential -- if you are paying that price in Lefferts, it ought to be in near-perfect move-in condition and in my judgement this place isn't.

Posted by: leffres at April 12, 2006 6:40 PM

Interesting comment Anon. 6:07. PLG has actually had a substantial middle-class population forever. Historically, because of the restrictive covenants in Lefferts Manor (at the center of PLG) the area did not become a neighborhood of SROs during the 1930's (like many other Brooklyn brownstone neighborhoods). The middle class never really left. There was a substantialn amount of "white flight" in the early '60s, but the neighborhood remained integrated (despite the conventional wisdom that cynically labels integration as a brief period between a neighborhood being "all white" and "all black"). I've lived in PLG for over 30 years, but I'm far from being a "pioneer."

Posted by: Bob Marvin at April 12, 2006 6:42 PM

From the pictures it looks tastefully decorated. We will have to wait and see what it goes for. All of the Maple Street houses have buyers (in this supposedly sluggish market), so I'm sure this one will find a buyer too.

Posted by: Anonymous at April 12, 2006 6:43 PM

All of the Maple Street houses have buyers? Including 160 that was discussed so recently?

Posted by: Anonymous at April 12, 2006 7:04 PM

From the pictures it looks like a lovely house. But it's more expensive than comparable ones in Ditmas Park, which doesn't make sense.

Posted by: Anonymous at April 12, 2006 7:09 PM

Bob Marvin consistently, relentlessly, tirelessly reps my beloved PLG - i've got your back big man - it's appreciated out here -

Posted by: franz fanonymous at April 12, 2006 7:26 PM

as far as PLG's future -

honestly i don't give a damn if another white person ever moves into PLG. and yes, i'm white myself. i represent white flight from white people! i rented in PS for a few years starting in 1999 and watched the place become an unbearably homogenized twilight zone of excruciatingly over the hill hipsters and 17.99 eggs benedict brunch enthusiasts. i mean seriously, the hi-tech strollers, the kids being named silly names like Cooper and Jackson, the pampered wives chatting on their cellphones while the west indian domestic spoons out the frozen yogurt to the snot-nosed kid - the place just became revolting - PLG? just people living without the self-styled irony - i hope it lasts -

Posted by: franz fanonymous at April 12, 2006 7:45 PM

I couldn't careless about the skin color of any new residents of PLG. I just don't want to deal with anyone that wishes they lived somewhere else coming in and not wanting to appreciate PLG for what great neighborhood it is. Great, not perfect.

Posted by: Nativegal at April 12, 2006 9:46 PM

One of the fascinating and depressing facts of life in New York City post 2000 is the absolute sangfroid (or is it cluelessness?) with which white upper middle class people talk of things like "massive white incursions."

There was a time, not so very long ago, that such talk would at least embarrass the writer/talker, as it just might occur to him that such talk had truly unpleasant racial overtones.

In this ironic real estate rules age, I suppose it doesn't make sense to get annoyed. So unhip that is. But Prospect Lefferts, as others thankfully have noted, has been an integrated neighborhood for almost a half century. One hopes and prays that the housing boom cools and allows it to stay that way before there is a massive white incursion.

Park Slope once was a great intriguing hood that mixed races and classes rather nicely. That's going going gone in much of the Slope (not implying evil here, but rather a steroidal market) and everyone in the neighborhood is the poorer for it.

Thanks

Posted by: Michael at April 12, 2006 11:57 PM

PLG is lovely, but I don't think there's much danger (or promise, take your pick) of it changing commercially. Price increases notwithstanding, Flatbush doesn't look much different than it did 10 years ago.

Posted by: Anonymous at April 13, 2006 12:43 AM

Michael, couldn't have said it better myself. Just...wow.

Posted by: Mai at April 13, 2006 5:28 AM

I think you might see change in PLG, but it won't seem radically different for another 10-20 years. Park Slope didn't transform in a night, and PLG seems to me about 30 years behind. Ditmas Park about 10. Don't know about Clinton Hill, but Brownstoner can weigh in.

Posted by: Anonymous at April 13, 2006 8:36 AM

Well said Michael. It's crazy what certain neighborhoods in Brooklyn are becoming. I'm getting really tired of these narrow-minded wannah be hipsters.

PLG is a nice neighborhood full of families and very convenient. I don't know what makes these newcomers to NYC think that they can come in and force their will on long time residents. Brooklyn is about family and community, not arrogant, selfish, self-centered, snobbish Manhattan/ Park Slope attitudes.

I wannah give a shout-out to Babs.

Posted by: Ed at April 13, 2006 8:52 AM

160 Maple was taken off the market. Not sold. I heard that the owner simply refused to accept below the asking of 975K and decided to pull it rather than take less. It will probably pop up with a new realtor in awhile.

Posted by: Anonymous at April 13, 2006 9:19 AM

Thank you, Michael.

Posted by: GardensGal at April 13, 2006 9:56 AM

Yes - thank you Michael. I am an ex-park sloper who moved to the Ditmas Park/PPS area about a year ago. One day I just looked around park slope and thought "where have all the good people gone - the people I moved here to be around - the diverse, interesting, artistic, open minded, friendly people?" I found myself surrounded by self-important, elitist people with nothing to talk about but the best brand of stroller and which gourmet store has the best selection of cheese. I found another great, mixed, interesting neighborhood and I actually cringe every time someone sings its praises on this site because I truly hope it does NOT change. Some of us do not actually want to live in Stepford...even if the Stepford wives now dress like hipsters, call themselves "edgy" and bring coffee shops and wine bars with them!

Posted by: Anonymous at April 13, 2006 10:20 AM

Ed, Talk about snobbish attitudes! Nobody, not one person mentioned Park Slope in this thread except PLG defenders who brought up PS to bash it as "unbearably homogenized," full of "snot-nosed kids," "arrogant, selfish and self-centered." At least when people knock PLG here -- usually unfairly -- they talk about services, shopping and safety, not your decency as people.

If claiming that the residents of your neighborhood are better human beings than those who live elsewhere isn't smug, I don't know what is.

Posted by: Anonymous at April 13, 2006 10:22 AM

Anonymous at April 12, 2006 06:07 PM
"the area is still too gritty for a massive white incursion, but the potential is certainly there..."
-Anyone who would write something like that is snobbish, smug, self-centered and ignorant.

Posted by: Ed at April 13, 2006 10:37 AM

Ed, but the anon said nothing about Park Slope, nor mentioned being from there, so why use his/her post as a springboard to trash slopers? Why bring up the Slope at all? (In fact, he/she favorably compared Clinton Hill / Fort Greene, so why not slam "selfish, self-centered" CH/FGers?)

Posted by: Anonymous at April 13, 2006 10:46 AM

Anonymous at 10:22. Having lived in Park Slope for several years, I am willing to state that I personally stopped enjoying the company and attitudes of most of the people there. Maybe that is smug, but it also happens to be true. I am more concerned with the people my family and I interact with on a daily basis, their attitudes and interests, than the number of services and the shopping. The thing I value most in my life is human interaction, not shopping and services. I'm sure there are lots of people who live in a neighborhood more for the shopping and services than for the people and others who do love the people in park slope. I am just not one of them and I am willing to admit it. In my opinion, the negatives of PLG are the lack of shopping and services (which park slopers bring up on this site all the time) and the negatives of park slope are the people. I think it is a legitimate point, when discussing a neighborhood, to compare it to others and to point out that some people value their neighbors more than the local wine shops.

Posted by: Anonymous at April 13, 2006 11:07 AM

anon 11:07, 10:22 here. You know, I'm glad to agree to disagree with you on Park Slope. Maybe I live in too declasse an area, but my friends and neighbors in the are pretty much unmaterialistic and down-to-earth... as much so as my friends in Fort Greene, Carroll Gardens, Williamburg, Kensington and, yes, PLG. Most drive old cars; no one among us owns a bugaboo; no one's a trader or hedge fund manager or corporate lawyer. We do like cheese. God help us.

My social circle is concentrated west of 7th Avenue, so I suppose I just encounter the ultra-rich New Park Slope less often--but it's a big neighborhood, and to me it's no less friendly or grounded than when I moved here in the early 90s.

But whatever. YMMV. And at least you cited something of your experience rather than tossing it out as an everyone-knows-that objective fact. My point is, tho, this thread wasn't about comparing PS with PLG at all -- UNTIL PLGers brought it up to bash its character as a way of defending living in in PLG. It was like some weird, paranoid pre-emptive strike.

I think people in PLG are nice too, because I actually know some of them. But some of you need to get over your obsession with judging yourself in relation to the Slope.

And yes -- to answer the expected response -- slopers on this site have described
PLG unfavorably. But so have people from plenty of other nabes -- see the recent thread knocking PLG in favor of Sunset Park. And it was PLG -- home of the "stop bashing us all the time!" posts -- that initiated the bashing here.

Having said all that... PLG is a gorgeous, seemingly tight-knit neighborhood in a nice location and I can totally see the appeal of living there. If I didn't already have a house, I might even move there and try to corrupt your souls. And frankly, if you can convince any more people to move out of the evil Slope to the Land of Good People across the park, I'll be thankful for the reduced congestion.

Posted by: Anonymous at April 13, 2006 11:38 AM

kudos to michael. so long as it has come into the discussion, i'll mention my opinion of the slope!

i left there in 1993. by that time it had already become snore central. i lived on 10th between 4th and 5th, before that on president near the park, a few houses up from the haagen-dazs (is that still there?) at that time it was in the final transition between 'old' park slope where my husband grew up (1970's era) and what it is today. it was sorta lesbian, sorta old-timers in apartments, and a bunch of stroller pushers. i believe that cucina was open, and that little coffee shop pastry joint on 6th ave, and the fast food burrito joint, also on 6th.

i moved to (gasp!) williamsburg. not matter what it is, it's not yuppie hipster in the slope sense, but that's surely just around the bend. we're keeping an eye out for a good house in greenpoint, but north shore staten island looms. if we had kids we'd consider leffert's, if we were priced out of CH. our businesses are in wburg, so g'point is tempting, but staten island offers more bang for the buck, and the people are anything but hipsterish.

so, i dunno ... i left the WV in the early '80's, the EV in the late 80's, moved to the slope and was bored to death, and disgusted with the F train. my husband left the slope in the early '80's and has never wavered from his desire to return to the g'point of his (early) youth. to me, a hood is a hood is a hood, and i can be happy most anywhere. that said, i was never so bored with a neighborhood as i was in the park slope of the early '90's.

Posted by: anon at April 13, 2006 12:24 PM

Oh lay off the Park Slope bashing will yah. Why does every neighborhood discussion seem to spiral into a class/race war, which invariably drags PS into it?

Do some folks represent the stereotype described by Franz? Sure. Do those people annoy me too? Yes. But, how about a little tolerance please. The air must be pretty thin up on that high horse.

These people do not represent an entire neighborhood. There are plenty of regular folk still around, and Park Slope, for all it's influx of wealthy Manhattanite baggage (which has been happening over the past 40 years), is still a lovely place to live.

Posted by: Miguel at April 13, 2006 1:04 PM

I agree with Michael when he writes "Prospect Lefferts, as others thankfully have noted, has been an integrated neighborhood for almost a half century. One hopes and prays that the housing boom cools and allows it to stay that way".

However, as quick as I always am to defend PLG, I'm not comfortable with defending my neighborhood, or any other, by invidious comparisons with Park Slope, or any other neighborhood. I guess the Slope, as the paradigm of neighborhood revival "success" stories, is an easy target, but this just isn't necessary. As a veteran of the old Brooklyn Brownstone Conference in the '70s and '80s, I'm oriented towards a positive view of ALL brownstone neighborhoods.

Posted by: Bob Marvin at April 13, 2006 2:13 PM

Well said, Bob (I was park sloper anon 11:38 above). and I would add that I wish PS were as well integrated as PLG and it's our loss that it isn't. but to jump from that to knocking the character of a whole neighborhood's residents -- which I guarantee you'd catch holy hell for if you did it to PLG -- is facile and baseless.

Posted by: Anonymous at April 13, 2006 2:22 PM

Re: Marvin's thoughts

I hope that my comments are not taken as a slap at all of Park Slope. As I've lived on and off in the Slope since the early 1980s, I have a great affection for the neighborhood--it's where my kids went to school and my wife and I have greatly enjoyed ourselves there and have many good friends.

But if we're to be honest, we need to acknowledge the caveats: The boom of the past few years has changed the Slope's character and some of that, not all by any means, is for the worse. I'd argue that the glory of New York City is it's fractitious mix, no? And to the extent that the price of admission to the Slope now comes attached to a vast price tag, it's simply a commonplace observation to note that this diminishes that mix and changes its character.

And with great wealth, sometimes sometimes, comes a sense of entitlement.

My hope is that places like Prospect Lefferts Garden, and Kensington and (well, we could go on ... ) are able to retain that special character that makes Brooklyn such a great place to live. I shudder for the day that we're simply Manhattan II (And I was born on the Upper West Side ... )

Oh yeah. I still enjoy Park Slope ...

Anyway ... enda sermon.

Thanks

Posted by: Michael at April 13, 2006 3:15 PM

"But if we're to be honest, we need to acknowledge the caveats: The boom of the past few years has changed the Slope's character and some of that, not all by any means, is for the worse. "

True, but, okay... SO WHAT?

This can be said about any popular neighborhood in NYC to varying degrees. There will always be old timers who lament what was, and newcomers who wish the pace of change was even faster. You don't think the same is true of your own present neighborhood? Do you really think it will remain frozen in time? Do you think your arrival was necessarily welcomed by all? If so, then you're full of it (and of yourself).

I've lived in and around the Slope for the better part of 15 years, and frankly I happen to like most of the changes. I'm glad it's not the same and I like that people are willing to pay millions for my humble abode (should I decide to sell some day).

To each his own pal.

Posted by: Anonymous at April 13, 2006 10:55 PM

I think South Park's.. smug alert might be heading for these parts! Heads up, gass maskes on!

Posted by: Anonymous at April 15, 2006 11:22 AM

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