House of the Day: Wood for 52 Midwood

Cautious -- are you a mortgage broker? (I'm not being snotty -- I'm curious.) Or is there some easy, publicly accessible way to determine where there are subprime mortgages? I don't know why I'd assume there are more there than anywhere else. And if there are, there'd actually be less risk in the city than elsewhere; even buyers who bought three years ago won't have any problem getting above what they bought for; it just means they might not make any money back b/c of the interest they were paying.

Regardless, I can't see how $1.5 for this could be called a "premium" when you look at what places are getting anywhere else in Brooklyn...or anywhere else north of Brooklyn college, anyway. It's a pristine, four-story brownstone with a backyard, a dry basement, 4-zone AC, new wiring, blah blah blah, and it's selling for under $400 a square foot. I'm not sure you could get that kind of price/value ratio anywhere else (again, north of Brooklyn college). There are obviously factors that depress the prices in PLG -- amenities, schools, crime, etc -- but $1.5 for that, in this city, in this market, could never be called a premium.

One last thing: I'd definitely agree people should only buy in the neighborhood (or any neighborhood) if they want to live there now; people who speculate with their own houses can end up getting burned and being miserable. And it's true that people have been saying for years that PLG is on the cusp of "turning." People were also been saying for years that Carroll Gardens and Boerum Hill were on the cusp of turning (despite the projects); that Fort Greene and Clinton Hill were on the cusp of "turning" (despite the projects and the lack of public transportation); that Windsor Terrace and Sunset Park and Ditmas were on the cusp of "turning." And in the past 5-10 years, all of them have. It's what happened in Manhattan: all the neighborhoods that people said would never be desirable -- from Tribeca to Hell's Kitchen to the LES to Alphabet City to the meatpacking district -- are now all crazy expensive. NYC is somewhat unique in that there's no possibility of the kind of urban sprawl you see in Boston or Atlanta or Chicago. The psychological boundaries of the city are the actual boundaries of the city. Add to that the capital improvement stuff going on across the borough, the Prospect Park efforts, the insane Meier condos a mile up the road, etc., and it's reasonable to conclude that the neighborhood will change over the next five years. And if it doesn't, someone will still be happy with that $1.5 mil house.

Posted by: prosperpark at March 20, 2007 4:02 PM

Dreamin, I don't get your math: why is it that someone who could afford a $1.5 million house be in a category where $2.5 is not out of the question? By that logic, someone who could afford an $800,000 house is likely in a category with someone who could afford a $1,280,000 house. Assuming this imaginary $1.5 buyer has $300,000 (20%) to put down, his/her mortgage would be about $7388/month (30 yr fixed @ 6.25). A $2.5 mortgage with that same $300,000 down is about $13,545/month. That's a difference of about $74,000 a year. That's a big difference. And a big category of people that could afford one and not the other.
That kind of odd leap of logic seems to be somewhat endemic in your posts. I have no idea why the buyers of a $1.5 single family home would "probably" have school-age children anymore than they'd "probably" be gay or "probably" be empty-nesters who want to live near the park.
And finally -- and lord knows it's a waste of time to have this same debate again -- there is most definitely a lack of services in PLG...just as there is in Windsor Terrace and Ditmas and Clinton Hill and parts of the two Hills and the optimistically christened South Slope. It's a mile from Lincoln & Flatbush to Grand Army Plaza, and about 50 yards from the Q. By my reckoning, that makes PLG in considerably closer proximity to "services" than huge swaths of Brooklyn, including a lot of the Ft Greene/Clinton Hill areas. And it makes it about equidistant from the heart of either the 5th or 7th Ave shop-centric parts of the Slope as, say, 14th and 6th.
Finally, one last point. I don't get the paranoia about people trying to "hype" their neighborhood to drive up prices or push "change." There are, what, five or six places for sale? If they all sold tomorrow, the neighborhood still wouldn't change all that much. And houses aren't pump-and-dump stocks. PLG is what it is: a neighborhood with its unique advantages and disadvantages. I'm sure we can figure out a way to discuss those on their own merits.

Posted by: prosperpark at March 21, 2007 11:00 AM

* It's about four minutes from the park (unlike Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn Heights).
* It's about ten minutes from the Brooklyn Museum (unlike every brownstone neighborhood save for Prospect Park).
* It's on the Q, which means you have relatively easy access to pretty much anyplace in Manhattan (unlike Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, much of Park Slope, Fort Greene, and Clinton Hill) via Atlantic/Pacific. What's more, the Q is an express train. Unlike the F.
* The historic LM district is the only brownstone neighborhood that's been zoned exclusively for one-family homes, which means you have more stability, you have more integration, and you have more houses that haven't lost the interior architectural detail that helped make them so unique in the first place. That's why you see things like the Maple Street School and active community efforts to bring a wider range of cultural offerings, which is precisely the kind of thing you don't see in many other neighborhoods.
* It's underpriced relative to every other brownstone neighborhood in the borough, and is way underpriced compared to every other neighborhood that borders the park.
* Because it's (relatively) underpriced, there's been more interest in the area among the kind of artistic/intellectual people that fueled the transformation of many other Brooklyn neighborhoods.

But all of this has been discussed ad nauseum. I'm not sure many -- or any -- of these points are really arguable, just as I'm not sure how it's arguable that there's a wide range of restaurant options, an organic supermarket, hip bar, a B&N, a Gap, or top-notch public schools nearby. There's a tradeoff in most things. Real estate is never any different. Some people will find the points above worthwhile; some people would prefer to spend their $900,000 (or $1.5 mil) on a 2-BR condo (or two floors of a brownstone) in the Heights.

There's also no real argument to made that you're going to hear gunshots there. Based on statistical evidence, you're much, much more likely to hear gunshots in, say, 10012...you know, that crazy dangerous Soho neighborhood where four people were gunned down last week. Or be killed in 10014, where there've been, in the last two years, a hate stabbing and a dead body found draped over a fence. (And no, I'm not arguing either of these neighborhoods aren't perfectly safe places to live. Unless, of course, you find Sex and the City tours dangerous.)

Posted by: prosperpark at March 21, 2007 1:44 PM