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October 18, 2006

Co-op of the Day: 21 South Portland Avenue

co-op co-op
How psyched was the owner of this dripping-with-details floor-through brownstone co-op when Time Out NY named South Portland the Best Block in New York City the same week he put his place on the market! His parlor floor apartment in a 25-foot-wide brownstone has some extra juice in the form of a rear extension making it a larger-than-normal 1,170 square feet and allowing for two bedrooms. The woodwork and mirrors are to die for. It's unclear to us from the photo how nice the kitchen is. The asking price of $829,000 is definitely on the high side for the area but may not be completely crazy given the apartment's pedigree. Did anyone make it to the open house on Sunday?
21 South Portland Ave FSBO [NY Times] GMAP
Stunning Parlor Floorthru in 25' Brownstone [Brooklynian]




Posted by Brownstoner at 11:31 AM | Comments (31)
Categories: Co-ops

Comments

Bidding war is my guess. Sorry to be so optimistic but . . . it's sensational.

Posted by: Anonymous at October 18, 2006 12:24 PM

I would take it with the furniture (I'm the optimist from above).

Posted by: Anonymous at October 18, 2006 12:26 PM

At $709 a square foot and with a garden,this seems like a fairly priced coop.

Posted by: Torch at October 18, 2006 12:42 PM

Didnt some coop on S. Portland sell recently for even more? (It was closer to the park, but not by much)

Posted by: Anonymous at October 18, 2006 12:54 PM

you must all be smoking someothing good. no way it trades anywhere close - i like it but 800k+big ass monthly charges?!

Posted by: Anonymous at October 18, 2006 12:55 PM

Can comment on the price w/o seeing a floorplan or the actual apartment, plus kitchen looks to be devoid of cabinets.

Posted by: Anonymous at October 18, 2006 12:59 PM

What do you want to see for layout? It's a 25' wide brownstone. Holy jesus.

Below is the other coop that sold recently. Not nearly as nice by any means, and high charges, but still sold ok:

FORT GREENE $651,799 6 South Portland Avenue 1-bedroom, 1-bath, 900-sq.-ft. co-op in a brownstone; private deck; maintenance $895, 40% tax-deductible

Posted by: Anonymous at October 18, 2006 1:06 PM

some of us (those who are logical) make buying decisions based on more than the height of the pier mirror or the color of the wood finishes. The layout matters, especially in brownstone conversions. I for one would not want a place where i have to walk through the kitchen to the bath to the bedroom. i think sellers do themselves a disservice by not including floor plans. I tend to look at then ever more i look at the pictures. Paint color and finishes a easy to change, but a bad layout????

Posted by: Anonymous at October 18, 2006 1:12 PM

For $700 per square foot, $900 per month common charges, and a kitchen from the old west - it looks a bit pricey to me. Though the opportunity to buy a parlor floor on a very nice block doesn't come along very often and may open up the market for those who can't buy the whole brownstone. Time will tell.

Posted by: dcardoni at October 18, 2006 1:24 PM

This is gorgeous. Just gorgeous. If I had the money, I would just rent out my skinny brownstone completely and buy this. A 25 foot brownstone is a 25 foot brownstone. It is dripping with details, highish maintenance but so beautiful. As for cabinets, just buy some more cabinets...

Posted by: anon at October 18, 2006 1:38 PM

Funny, I actually love that kitchen. I guess it's kinda fashionable to have everything matching and built-in like a Martha Stewart set, but I actually prefer these European style kitchens, where everything is a separate object or piece of furniture. I'd just get some gorgeous free-staninding cabinets. (They have some nice ones in the dining room!)

As far those of you who are logical, don't let your logic miss the point of real estate: to love your home. It's easy these days to make convenience and comfort out of anything; it's hard to find natural, inherent grace and charm. Layout is STILL not as important as width of home, height of ceiling and location -- because though you can change floor plan, you can't change any of the other elements of a home, and those are the elements that really make the difference. "Logic" can be very short-sighted and is often a number-crunching cop out. Wisdom is better. My friends bought a small house in Dumbo ten years ago because they fell in love with it, put all their money into it. Their decision wasn't logical then. It is now.

Posted by: Anonymous at October 18, 2006 2:09 PM

I totally agree with you, 2:09. You are so...logical! I do like this kitchen alot better than your usual granite countertop/poggenpuhl cabinets/viking/subzero appliances. ZZZZ, I'm so tired of looking at those. Their pot rack here is a ladder! Gotta love them for having some imagination! I prefer to buy antique pieces and convert them for use as functional cabinets, vanities and such. Mass produced stuff freaks me out...I don't care how "high end" it is. I also think that changing a layout isn't such a huge deal. Pain in the butt, but can be done.

Posted by: Yente at October 18, 2006 3:00 PM

Agreed ... you seen one granite counter, you've seen them all.. I would rather get a hoosier cabinet and some free standing interesting furniture any time. But those details are amazing! Grace and charm win everytime! And space don't hurt either...

Posted by: debbie at October 18, 2006 3:04 PM

I like the apartment itself the size and location but I hate the aesthetic. as much as I love brownstones and some of the original work I think its too gaudy and over the top sometimes with the woodwork and the mirrors as shown here which is why I wouldn't dare to purchase it because it would break my heart to destroy much of it but annoy the hell out of me to let a king tut mirror stay in my place. that said, I think this is a little pricey.

Posted by: Anonymous at October 18, 2006 3:19 PM

CC/Maint $893
Wow that's like $100 less then my rent for a 2 bedroom apt.

Posted by: Anonymous at October 18, 2006 3:36 PM

Be careful anon 3:19, you are asking for trouble - them words amount to blasphemy on this site!.

Posted by: Anonymous at October 18, 2006 3:36 PM

I'm with you 3:19, I couldn't stand to live with all that fusty ornamentation either. I do like 13' ceilings, tho ...

Posted by: Anonymous at October 18, 2006 4:13 PM

For those of you who say a bad layout is easy to change, it really depends on the particular unit. It can cost a tremendous amount of money if you have to, say, get into moving water and gas lines to correct a poorly sited kitchen for example. Some layouts aren't worth the cost to rejigg. And some just don't provide that many options. I'll also say this too, after 12 years and one renovation in an immaculately maintained victorian brownstone coop, as much as I love all that irreplaceable period detailing and want to weep when I hear of people willfully ripping it out of old buildings I also found it a bit of an apocryphal relief to be free of it. It can feel like a straightjacket at times.

Posted by: combustiblegirl at October 18, 2006 6:25 PM

Common charges are awfully high. I would be wary of a purchase like this. with charges like that means the building itself was probably refi'd a couple times to get money out hopefully for capital improvments, but unlikely, probably unsavvy board

Posted by: Anonymous at October 18, 2006 6:28 PM

"How psyched was the owner of this dripping-with-details floor-through brownstone co-op when Time Out NY named South Portland the Best Block in New York City the same week he put his place on the market!".

The article was probably the very reason why he decided to sell it. Many times if you're a local in an area about to be featured you get a 'heads-up" before the article even comes out. I bet that might have been the case here.

On a different note, lemme ask this;

I make $90,000 a year and my wife makes $48,000 and between the two of us we can't afford to pay a ridiculous $829,000 price. So who the hell is buying these craps?. I mean it's freakin' BROOKLYN for crying out loud.
How much do YOU guys make?. How the hell are you affording the payments AND maintenance charges, which in many cases almost equal another mortgage payment?. WHERE is the middle-class?. How do they survive?.

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON WITH THESE PRICES?.

Posted by: Left Behind at October 18, 2006 7:51 PM

It's tough to enter the market today with a combined income of 150k. We were able to do it on a similar income in 2000. Bought a 2-bedroom co-op on the Upper West Side for 479k. Those days are gone. You have to look farther afield, either in ungentrified Bklyn, Queens, Staten Island or the Bronx. By the way, just 3 years prior to that, the co-op we bought for 479k was bought by an investor for just over 200k.

My point? 1) The RE market is due for a correction 2) Some areas have improved to the extent that buyers at your income level will never be able to afford even in the case of a decline

Posted by: Anonymous at October 18, 2006 8:55 PM

Go to HBS, get a job on the Street and stop whinning!

Posted by: Anonymous at October 18, 2006 9:18 PM

"My point? 1) The RE market is due for a correction 2) Some areas have improved to the extent that buyers at your income level will never be able to afford even in the case of a decline"

Thanks for sharing the pain. Although in your case it doesn't seem to hurt that much anymore, huh? (wink).

What you say is probably true. I'm actually living in much-more affordable California right now but I'm desperate to move back to NYC. And for me that means Manhattan, 'cause the rest sucks IMHO. The big question tho is just HOW MUCH of a market-correction are we talking here?. I think an enormous amount of people over-leveraged themselves and the hurt will only get worse over the course of at least the next three years. We'll see.


To Anon 9:18 pm; Why go to HBS when I can go to HBO and watch your sister do porn on pay-per-view?.

Posted by: Desk Sgt. at October 18, 2006 9:29 PM

When I hear that "It's just Brooklyn!" talk it reminds me of people saying "It's just downtown!" a mere 15 years ago.

Posted by: Anonymous at October 18, 2006 9:31 PM

1) It is indeed 'only' freakin' Brooklyn. Always has been and always will. It is definitely NOT Manhattan, so unless we're talking the Heights or DUMBO, you might as well be in Jersey.

2) If you're in Jersey you might as well be in Tibet.

3) If you're in Tibet you might as well commit yakicide by intentionally getting yourself run over by a yak, it's THAT depressing.

CONCLUSION: Better to be run-over and killed by a yak in Tibet than to live in Brooklyn.

Posted by: Desk Sgt. at October 18, 2006 9:39 PM

To anon at 7:51, this may not make you feel any better but my husband and I have a combined income of slighly over $500K with another $300K in cold hard cash and we have been looking to buy a house in PS for over a year with no luck, we are all feeling the pain.

Posted by: Anonymous at October 18, 2006 10:22 PM

anon 8:55 - you can't want things to go that badly because if they do, you won't find a 90k job to pay that mortgage, even if property prices drop 50%. 50% just about brings it in Manhattan back to 2000 levels. Bk would have to suffer a greater fall to go back to 2000. 75% would bring it back to 1996/97.

Posted by: Anonymous at October 18, 2006 11:01 PM

To the person earning 90K: you earn less than the median salary in NY. You should move to Ohio.

Posted by: Anonymous at October 19, 2006 6:45 AM

that Pier Mirror and marble thing would clearly added later. Don't even fit in that space. Feel free to get sell them if you move in -- no guilt needed

Posted by: Anonymous at October 19, 2006 11:22 AM

um...what anon 11:22...

Posted by: anon at October 19, 2006 5:30 PM

does anyone know if it sold, and if so what it went for?

Posted by: anon at October 31, 2006 9:57 PM

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