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November 22, 2006

Wolcott "Piece o' Crap" Still On Market

houses
We were interested (but not surprised) to see that no one has touched the two spec houses on Wolcott across from the Red Hook Houses since we last went by in September. With the market softening, we suspect a lot of this crap is just going to wither on the vine.
No Takers For Red Hook Piece o' Crap [Brownstoner] GMAP




Posted by Brownstoner at 10:03 AM | Comments (21)
Categories: Properties

Comments

These buildings are shooting uplike fungus everywhere....Flatbush, Crowns Heights, Bushwick are littered with them. They have even squeezed a few into OMB where I live and they are NOT selling. Asks have shrunk from close to $800K for a 2 or 3 family to $699K....and they STILL can't move them. Surprise surprise. What troubles me is they are tearing down some perfectly good homes to sprout these mushrooms.

I am Caribbean-born and I do see quite a few Caribbean-born families buying these homes, because I think they feel it's their (only?) shot at the american dream. For many, compared to what they had back home, these houses are fantastic and a dream come true, and....they have rental income. My siblings refused to believe that it was shoddy new construction or bust and just decided to get their 2-3 acre american dream in North Carolina, Georgia and Maryland. (Like many caribbean people that I know my sibs were longing for the giant yard and a less urban feel. They have that great urge to plant veggies and fruits from back home. :-))

So, as "fugly" as these homes are, indeed, one man's trash is another man's treasure....and proof of his piece of the franchise. Alas, there will still be some buyers out there...God bless 'em everyone.

Posted by: OldMillBasin at November 22, 2006 10:43 AM

Fuggly yes, but it looks like you get garage space. I'm a public transport, non driver; but I know that lots of people have cars and want a place to park them. You would think that the garage space alone would have sold the otherwise sad looking piles of brick.

Posted by: Anonymous at November 22, 2006 10:48 AM

Not that I'm schilling for Corcoran, but there's an interesting new condo development around the corner. The ask is too high right now but I stuck my head in at the open house and the realtors made it quiet clear the units were negotiable. I think for anyone interested in Red Hook these are certainly worth checking into. The facade's nothing to write home about and the style of some of the interior elements is a little heavy for my taste, but the quality looked good, so it's really more a to each his own scenario. (Although, I do have to say that I think the light fixture/pot rack in the kitchen is a disaster waiting to happen but that's swapped out easily enough.)
http://www.corcoran.com/property/listing.aspx?Region=NYC&ListingID=866059

Posted by: combustiblegirl at November 22, 2006 10:59 AM

These are awful but this one

[ http://tinyurl.com/y99xot ]

in Harlem is the ugliest thing I've ever seen. I've walked past a few times and it makes me want to tear my eyes from my head. It is also unsold. I guess it's nice to know that there's a bottom to this market. Too bad this is where it is.

Posted by: Dan at November 22, 2006 11:00 AM

quit picking on Red Hook, will ya! It's one of the oldest parts of the original Dutch village of Breukelen and it doesn't even have a landmark district and the Historic District Council could care less.
Yes, the buildings are U-G-L-Y, but why don't all you smarty pants scribers help launch a landmark/rezoning campaign for RH which builds upon its existing vernacular architecture.

Posted by: Anonymous at November 22, 2006 11:23 AM

The arched windows in the Harlem fugly are not centered. It seems like the developers try and cut costs by not providing rulers/levelers for their contractors. My previous home was a fugly and it seemed like nothing was even or leveled. I'm happy to see that people's standards are higher and they're not buying these houses.

Posted by: faithful at November 22, 2006 11:33 AM


Some developers are totally out of touch with what affluent buyers want.

For the same money, they could have easly built something that looked 1000% better.

Posted by: Anonymous at November 22, 2006 12:59 PM

I know someone who brought one of these shoddily constructed homes. The quality is just horrible, you can see where the sheetrock was taped. There is water cascading through the walls and puddles in the basement. I have witnessed this problem with several of these homes.

Posted by: Anonymous at November 22, 2006 1:05 PM

I know someone who bought one of these shoddily constructed homes. The quality is just horrible, you can see where the sheetrock was taped. There is water cascading through the walls and puddles in the basement. I have witnessed this problem with several of these homes. There ought to be some law against this type of mostrousity. There is a place in Flatbush where one house was torn down, a couple more burnt, just to put up 11(!) of these homes.

Posted by: Anonymous at November 22, 2006 1:08 PM

Excellent post, OldMillBasin. What you say is true and is needed to help break the posters on this board out of their yuppie bubble. Alas, the follow-up posts only demonstrate just how shallow people are.

Posted by: Anonymous at November 22, 2006 1:24 PM

what i dont understand is WHO buys these? is it a bunch of poorish people that pool their money and live 5 to a bedroom. i dont know anyone that has that kind of monthly income to afford an 800k building... wit such BAD taste. and its not even taste, you almost have to be stupid.

Posted by: Anonymous at November 24, 2006 6:08 PM

and how do these stupid people find all this cashish?

Posted by: Anonymous at November 24, 2006 6:10 PM

what's up with those dimunitive gables on the roof. is it a contest to see how low the architects(undoubtedly strung out on meth)can go? they're nightmares. i'm glad to see most consumers are intelligent enough to pass them by.

these are truly grotesque, and demonstrate that their is no standard for design in NYC.

Posted by: adriennui at November 24, 2006 6:40 PM

sorry about the typos in my above post, i'm nauseated and not able to type accurately.

Posted by: adriennui at November 24, 2006 6:43 PM

What is the incentive for builders to even build these ugly, badly constructed, things in the first place? Why build something that appeals to only 5% of qualified buyers? Whatever bank these builders are getting their money from, should get a clue and stop funding them. It's a bad investment for these banks. I don't understand the logic or reasoning for any of the participants in these buildings.

Posted by: Anonymous at November 25, 2006 11:31 AM

Sadly, one of these mostrocities on my block in Bushwick actually sold. I was dumbstruck. Asking was 799 and hoping to find out how much it really went for. There are dozens in my general area which are still rotting like the corpsemeat they were meant to be. All hideous, all overpriced.

Posted by: Anonymous at November 25, 2006 4:03 PM

If you rich people would just move back up where y'all came from then these buildings wouldn't exist. It's cos of your types who move into our neighbourhoods that the prices soo freaking sky hight that the avg. man/woman/family can't afford to live here anymore. Then you have the guts to omplain about some "poorish people" buying fugly new houses? what did you think would happen? You would move into the TRi and these develops you left behind in Manhattan wouldn't follow? Oh am sorry, i forgot!!! It's only stupid upper middle class people that deserve to live in beautiful old historic houses.

Gawd, I hate how your types have destroyed the flavor that was TRI. Just go back to your nice big lofts and freaking expensive cramped quaters in manhattan. At least then we knew who was who.

Idiots!!!

Posted by: Cee at November 26, 2006 2:05 PM

Cee - methinks thou doth protest too much and with such bad grammar, but behind that I think you are a troll!!!!

Posted by: Anonymous at November 26, 2006 5:48 PM

cee -- calm yerself down, yo

Posted by: pfa at November 27, 2006 12:40 AM

This architect should be labeled an enemy combatant.

Posted by: BDG at November 29, 2006 10:02 AM

these developers make me sick. they are so clearly clueless about the neighborhoods theyve built these shitboxes in and so clueless about who is trying to buy into these neighborhoods that theyve ruined so many great opportunities to build condos that would move in a second. who wouldnt buy a nice condo for 275k to live in while they wait for their perfect brownstone to open up etc. i looked at a couple of these, because my family tends to go for new construction, and was appalled at the size of the rooms that they chop up so they can call it more 'bedrooms'. what BS.

Posted by: dave at December 6, 2006 11:50 AM

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