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February 19, 2007
House of the Day: 43 Love Lane
Believe it or not, today's House of the Day was built in 1999. Located on the same block as the soon-to-be-condo'd Love Lane garage, the building succeeds on the exterior as a credible carriage house recreation (though a straight roofline might have worked a little better). The interior — all 1,300 2,400 square feet of it — is much less successful. For this location and this price we'd expect a hell of a lot more than recessed lighting and cheesy marble floors. If you've got money to burn and care more about having jacuzzi than nice moldings, this could be the place for you. Or, if you want to spend half as much for twice the space, you could always check this place out.
43 Love Lane [Douglas Elliman] GMAP P*Shark
Photo by Scott Bintner for Property Shark
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Comments
Freestanding building and only two exposures? (One of which seems to be looking at some nasty firee escapes). What gives?
Posted by: Anonymous at February 19, 2007 12:11 PM
Wow--that is interesting. First let me say that, as much as I love our gorjus landmarked neighborhoods, I am the last person to argue that people should be attempting to replicate 150-year-old building styles today (I want some NEW architecture, dammit!). However, this building is seriously cool looking, and if anybody wants to build more like it Brooklyn, I say go for it. I agree with Mr. B that the cornice should be straight, but that's a fine point. Kudos to the designer and builder and whoever commissioned them. That said: Are you kidding me with the $3.5 million for 1300 sf? Gonna take a very particular buyer, this one.
Posted by: Bob999 at February 19, 2007 12:11 PM
Oftentimes on this blog, people say "what do you want to do, replicate the old brownstone (or in this case, carriage house) styles?" This building answers that question with a resounding YES.
Posted by: Anonymous at February 19, 2007 12:16 PM
Interior isn't that cool or interesting, but I don't see it as so g*d-awful as brownstoner in his daily rant above views it. I double-dare him to show us all of his bathroom tile choices in his house to see if we feel it's worthy of his architecture and moldings.
Posted by: Anonymous at February 19, 2007 12:22 PM
Dude,
Check our reno blog.
Posted by: brownstoner at February 19, 2007 12:43 PM
Anon 12:16, I agree with you that building authentic-looking old buildings like this is cool. And possible. But it's reallllly expensive.
Posted by: Bob999 at February 19, 2007 1:00 PM
I seem to recall when this bldg was built they were required to recreate a bldg that had stood there before. I forget the details, maybe that it was in such poor repair they had permission to take it down but only if they rebuily using the same design.
There are side-by-side carriage houses just next to this place that recently had issues regarding their restoration. They were given permission to gut a large portion of the place as long as they recreated it with approved materials. They botched it up big time. This building is more successful.
Not worth 3.5mm though, that's for sure
Posted by: Anonymous at February 19, 2007 1:14 PM
1999? wow that's great and look the bricks are red.
The developers that build without taking the neighborhood into consideration are just plain cheap. No one can argue that fact.
Posted by: jack slade at February 19, 2007 1:37 PM
I love the way the house looks from the outside, but the inside is not very interesting and the celiings seem low throughout.
I know the hieghts gets premium pricing, but Love Lane is no great shakes and this property has no garden. There is a roof deck, but those apartment buildings tower over it. I think $3.5 is a real stretch.
Posted by: Anonymous at February 19, 2007 2:00 PM
I agree the price is quite high, but also agree that your daily rant about your subjective opinion was quite high on the ranting scale, too. I get it already, so much so that I think I could supply your critical comments for you. And, I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I'm also kind of bothered that you're expressing all these opinions based solely (as far as I can tell) by looking at photographs.
Posted by: Anonymous at February 19, 2007 2:05 PM
The new-ish construct carriage house you point out as an alternative on Corcoran for $1.7M was built in 2004 and sold for $1.25M. Not a bad turn around.
Posted by: Mr. Minerva at February 19, 2007 2:55 PM
I remember well when this was built, and the installation a little later of those concrete mushrooms on the curb, which blocked the D'Agostinos delivery trucks from backing into the carriage house's living room. This one has to be a tough sell - way overpriced and right outside your front door will be a construction site for the couple of years it takes the condo development to replace the garage. Is anyone really going to pay over $3 mil for 3 bedrooms with no room to expand?
Posted by: zeebee at February 19, 2007 4:02 PM
I look at it as 2,268 sf (27x28 on 3 floors) not including roof deck. So at $3.5MM that works out to $1,540 psf. Not as high as your $2,500 psf but still a litle on the high side. While I am aware that the single-family townhouse average is approching $1,500 psf once you discard outliers and that carriage houses trade at an even higher premium in Brooklyn Heights I think this particular property gets discounted for location and for the fact that it is really not a functioning carriage house (no curb cut) and that it could not even be successfuly reconfigured IMO to accommodate even one vehicle. I think a price closer to $1,300 psf (at 2,268 sf) is a little more realistic.
Posted by: Not A Broker at February 19, 2007 4:09 PM
"While I am aware that the single-family townhouse average is approching $1,500 psf once you discard outliers"
what are you nuts? even the best brownstone struggles to pass $800 per square foot! Condos get over $1000, but "single-family townhouse" are not over $1000 yet.
Posted by: Anonymous at February 19, 2007 5:08 PM
Hmmm I wonder about that. When buying a condo, your per sq foot cost will be net liveable space. When buying a browntone, your calculation of per sq foot cost will be gross building footprint times however many floors it is. If you converted the brownstone's cost from total footprint to liveable area, you'd be way over $1000 a sq foot.
Posted by: Anonymous at February 19, 2007 6:56 PM
$3.5M for this carriage house is nuts. A few years ago my wife and I looked at one on Love Lane and all we kept on thinking is small small small. Plus as someone else noted, there just wasn't any good views or anything else to make us think of putting all of our life savings into it (at the time in 2002/2003 I recall the price to be around $1.1M or so for asking price).
Happy to have held out for a proper four floor brownstone elsewhere.
Posted by: Anonymous at February 19, 2007 7:59 PM
Brownstoner, you only showed us 1 shot of 1 bathroom. Hardly enough to scrutinize you the way you scrutinize others. People in glass houses.... This is a direct quote from your blog, "We've decided not to document the interior decoration of the house for two reasons: 1) It wasn't part of our original intention and 2)We're finding that our skin isn't quite as thick when it comes to defending the color of our sofa. Maybe because it's just that much more of an intimate subject. Hope everyone can understand that. Anyway, we'll continue to document the remaining details of the build out--and within the next couple of weeks we're hoping to have two new reno blogs starting. Thanks, B'stoner"
Posted by: Anonymous at February 19, 2007 9:24 PM
for the record:
square footage is approximately 2,300 square feet, not including full size roof deck
ceiling height is 9 ft 7 inches
view of July 4th fireworks from roofdeck: spectacular!
one spectacular home!
Posted by: for the record: at February 19, 2007 10:19 PM
Anon 9:24, who cares about Mr. B's bathroom? I'm much more interested in his coverage of the borough. The days when this was just his personal reno blog are long past.
Not A Broker, you don't count the basement when calculating square footage. This house is two floors.
Posted by: bob999 at February 19, 2007 11:29 PM
Anon 1:14 - what happened to those side by side carriage houses next door? How were they botched up?
Posted by: Anonymous at February 20, 2007 8:23 AM
Anon 9:24, we showed multiple shots of multiple bathrooms and we showed and discussed decisions about materials, fixtures, etc. We stopped short of fabric choices at the time but are slowly doing a room-by-room review, starting with the kitchen last month. Even if we hadn't shown any of that stuff, it would still be relevant for us to comment on as it affects how buyers evaluate a potential home. No like, no read.
Posted by: brownstoner at February 20, 2007 8:36 AM
bob999 - I am not absolutely sure but I think the Garden Level of this carriage house is at grade with rear garden of townhouse behind it.
Posted by: Not A Broker at February 20, 2007 8:56 AM
Mr. B, how the heck do you get 1300 square feet for this space?
Posted by: dcardoni at February 20, 2007 9:32 AM
When we first wrote it up, DE didn't have any square footage posted and Property Shark says 1,300. We'll update now.
Posted by: brownstoner at February 20, 2007 9:39 AM
Here is a similar project in Brooklyn that you all might like: http://www.hathewayarchitects.com/residential3.html (and no, it's not my website - it's for an architect I considered hiring for a project a couple of years ago)
Posted by: anon at February 20, 2007 10:14 AM
For the Record,
9 ft 7 in for this type of home is low ceilings. I'm sure the parlor floor in my non luxury bronwstone is 12+ ft.
Posted by: Anonymous at February 20, 2007 10:24 AM
First of all this might be the most overpriced listing ever. It is 730 sq ft x TWO plus a basement and a roof deck. Sorry people but basements and roof decks dont get full sq ft price. This place is well over $1600sq ft by any reasonable calculation and gets little light (both b/c it has few windows and b/c it is in an alley).
As for its architecture, while I dont object to one recreation in an already landmarked neighborhood, even aside from the cost to recreate - if you had a whole block of these faux-structures there would be little seperating it from Walt Disney World's Main Street USA. Talk about the mallification of America.....
Posted by: David at February 20, 2007 10:26 AM
Anyone know the name of the contractor who built the house? I have a project for him/her!
Posted by: Anonymous at February 20, 2007 2:03 PM
anon 5:08 from yesterday -
57 Willow Street - $5.7M, $1,435 psf
33 Love Lane - $1.235M, $1,450 psf
12 Middagh Street - $2.5M, $1,000 psf
20 Grace Court Alley - $2.675, $1,048 psf
34 Garden Place - $3.25M, $1,160 psf
$1,000 psf for townhouses and carriage houses in Brooklyn Heights is in the rear view mirror.
Posted by: Not A Broker at February 20, 2007 4:52 PM
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