House of the Day: 1230 Dean Street

You've got to be kidding. $1.5?? Dream on. That's laughable.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 1:25 PM

nice wide angle photos shots.

these sellers should be ASHAMED of themselves.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 1:28 PM

For the poster on the Cobble Hill-loft thread that feared about CH being ghetto-dangerous, HERE is your chance to spend over a million to live in true ghetto.

The broker property description should mention that it's an easy stroll to Atlantic Avenue, a charming Brooklyn thoroughfare.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 1:29 PM

Bathroom situation upstairs sucks on this one. Not liking sharing one bath among 4 bedrooms.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 1:38 PM

This place is awesome. I walk by it all the time.. the block is beautiful. They lowered the price. I think it will sell for the new lower price.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 1:38 PM

They won't get this price.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 1:41 PM

Interestingly, some of the reno choices are good/fine, even nice, but other stuff is more outside of the bounds of a certain class-taste. The kitchen is a bit troubling. Price is disturbing.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 1:44 PM

It does look beautifully restored, and is a nice layout. The major flaw that jumps out at me is only 1 1/2 baths for a 4-bedroom place.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 1:46 PM

I say it will go for $1.25

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 1:47 PM

thanks eric and candice davis....i mean 1:38!

i need some of the crack you two been smokin.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 1:49 PM

Nice reno and beautiful backyard. Hope they get the asking price.Everything else is overpriced in all neighborhoods so why should this owner not ask? Cause it is Crown Heights?

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 1:52 PM

this is not overpriced, 1:52.

this is called obscene.

there's a difference.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 1:59 PM

$800,000 tops.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 2:00 PM

"Cause it is Crown Heights?"

Exactly.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 2:01 PM

Montrose @ 2:00pm. I love how people rationalize how their little block is somehow cut off from everything, like some bunker.

This house is less than two blocks from Atlantic Ave, which in this stretch (basically anything from the Flatbush intersection to JFK airport) is one of the nastiest stretchs of urban roadway I have ever seen. Easily one of the worst in U.S.

You can pretend that Crown Heights and this house are on the moon if you want, but that's the reality.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 2:16 PM

Nice renovation and back yard. Too bad it's in a slum.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 2:21 PM

they should take those double-decker tourists buses up that stretch of atlantic. authentic nyc.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 2:27 PM

People on this site trash 4th Avenue in PS as some horrifying dump and yet gleefully talk about spending millions to live in these slum neighborhoods.

Historic district or not, Crown Heights is the definition of slum, and the earlier poster's comment about Atlantic Ave is spot on - it looks like Baghdad on a bad day.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 2:29 PM

Nice house, nice renovation, nice area. Might be a little high priced, but the marketplace will determine that. Crown Heights is a great, diverse neighborhood with magnificent architecture and diverse community. Does have its grittier areas, but it's far better than some parts of NYC. It's quite far from a slum.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 2:35 PM

This is not overpriced. A four-story that needed a gut reno just sold on Dean Street for 8ook.. This is right on target if it sells for $1.25 million. Gorgeous block and Crown Heights North is beautiful. There ARE BAD parts, including the Albany Projects but that is a different ballgame. ---
Crown Heights Res

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 2:37 PM

Look Momie, more overpriced shit. Gee I wonder if real people will live here.

Fannie Mae sees more housing, credit pain in 2008
Lender forecasts more credit losses, home-price declines as high as 12%

The information was posted on Fannie Mae's Web site in a road-show presentation supporting its offering of $7 billion in non-convertible preferred stock, which the company unveiled on Tuesday. Fannie Mae is also slashing its dividend by 30% in a move aimed at boosting its capital to manage risk in the housing and credit markets.

Fannie Mae sees a 3% decline in home prices through the end of 2007, and losses between 4% and 5% next year "although the precise timing of the declines is difficult to predict." The months' supply of total existing homes increased to 10.8 months in October from 7.4 months a year earlier.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/fannie-mae-sees-more-credit/story.aspx?guid=%7BEC7E929B-ACF2-4799-8E97-BF10FDC2CD12%7D

The What

Someday this war is gonna end..

BTW How many crackheads can afford this? Do the math.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 2:52 PM

Liking the reno; hard to tell about the kitchen floor but it might just be really waxed. The library/study is awesome.

I think this house might be an example of bad timing. A year ago it might have sold at this price or slightly less, but now, with a lot of buyers sitting on the sidelines, it may languish.

Which is a shame, because you aren't going to find many complete, move-in townhouses anywhere closer for much less. (Well, maybe far South Slope, or eastern Bed-Stuy, but it's sort of a wash). I'd also think the garage is worth $50-100k. It would be to me. Hopefully someone will track this place when and if it sells and link back.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 2:58 PM

Crown Heights gentrifiers live in a bubble. It's not that far from South Bronx in the late '70's. Hell, my friend in Prospect Heights near Washington Ave has already been mugged on his doorstep and he hasn't been there two years yet.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 3:02 PM

Ok house on a nice street in the middle of a serious shit-hole. Sounds like a deal.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 3:07 PM

Just a suggestion. The owners need to re-stage the kitchen. It is very Sopranos as has already been mentioned. While there are some who will appreciate that aesthetic, many others will not. And the goal is to get the best price, right?

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 3:14 PM

Yeah, but Atlantic Ave in CH is on a whole 'nother level of bad than practically anything else out there. Can you imagine going out to JFK to pick up a friend or relative and driving them back to your million-dollar CH crib along Atlantic and then saying "I live just around the corner".

Montrose, you are in denial. People love to self-associate proximity to good things (I live right by Prospect Park, three long blocks away) but try and pretend that they aren't a hundred yards from one of the scariest, saddest, most depressing streets ever - which is what Atlantic is.

Needless to say, I will not be buying this house.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 3:21 PM

3:02 - my friend you are clearly clueless about NYC in the 70s if you think being mugged once in two years is close to what it was like in the South Bronx. People were mugged far more often than that on the upper east side.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 4:16 PM

how far is atlantic av from that landmarked yellow house on lefferts place?

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 4:19 PM

"Hell, my friend in Prospect Heights near Washington Ave has already been mugged on his doorstep and he hasn't been there two years yet."

I'll get him AGAIN if he shows up on the avenue, yo! You, too!

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 4:24 PM

Montrose,
Your surrender is accepted. Unfortunately, following the cessation of hostilities there will be no Marshall Plan to help you rebuild Atlantic Avenue.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 4:26 PM

Guest at 4:19, one block. You can see the backyard of this house from the parking lot of the White Castle on Atlantic.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 4:48 PM

That's the backyard of the yellow Lefferts house, which can be seen from Atlantic Avenue at White Castle. Not the Dean St. house.

Unclear at 4:48

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 4:57 PM

That stretch of Atlantic Ave is truly unfortunate. I love CH but I do think the elevated track takes away from the overall loveliness of the nabe. If the elevated tracks can just be submerged (as it is to the east and west) the strip would be much brighter and positive development would have a chance. The area would even be safer without the shadow of the el hovering. All that said, it would not stop me from buying into CH.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 4:57 PM

4.16. Was referring more to the aesthetics of Atlantic being comparable to South Bronx, not the level of crime. In my mind, blight-wise, they are comparable.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 5:02 PM

"Hell, my friend in Prospect Heights near Washington Ave has already been mugged on his doorstep and he hasn't been there two years yet."

I've lived in Crown Heights since 2001, and never been close to being mugged. But I guess I'm just the type of guy people don't want to try mugging. You "friend," on the other hand, sounds like some kind of special target.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 5:14 PM

wait...there's a WHITE CASTLE IN THE BACKYARD!!??

i take it back.

this place, i want!

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 5:19 PM

These beautiful blocks in CH must be hidden because whenever I drive along Atlantic it looks bleak, bleak, bleak.

And when heading along Atlantic with my back to Flatbush Ave I look out the right side but never catch site of anything close to nice. Best that can be said is that it looks marginally better than what I see when I look left.

I know, I know, I have to take right turn and check out all the pockets of goodness that are hidden in there.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 6:23 PM

Brownstoner:

This is a sweet house on one of my favorite blocks from my childhood in Crown Heights.

My school, P.S. 41, a Victorian red-brick pile with a mansard roof, was at the corner of Dean Street and New York Avenue, and my kindergarten and first-grade teacher often walked her class down Dean on the first leg of our class trips to other parts of the neighborhood (taking buses to the Brooklyn Museum, for example). One of my first insights into adult behavior occured on this block. As we walked along, a man passing us turned and asked: "Are all these your children?" My teacher smiled and said no. Suddenly, I knew what flirting was, even though I didn't have a name for it.

As I learned many years later, my little school was torn down for a high-rise apartment house, but only after it was sold or leased to a Yeshiva and my friends and I were transferred to P.S. 138 on Sterling Place (or is it Street?) off Nostrand Avenue. This was a longer walk for me, but a real pleasure, because I got to know the stores and merchants along the way. Imagine, a second grader walking unaccompanied by his parents to school! But that's how safe the neighborhood was. And important for a city kid who was learning to navigate his neighborhood and town.

Dean Street between New York and Nostrand was bookended by two handsome churches, as it probably still is. Significantly, in retrospect, they were Protestant, not Catholic, representing the relative status of the neighborhood when they were built. (Catholics at the turn of 1900 were usually working class. Jewish residents, who arrived later in the area, built synagogues in and around Eastern Parkway and Brower Park, where big elevator apartment houses provided middle-class housing. Dean, in the meantime, kept a bit of old-fashioned Protestant elitism alive. Did I read social and class signifiers then? Certainly not, I was too busy having a good time. And I had friends of all types.)

Dean Street's houses were terrifically eclectic. But more important to me than their architecture were the stoops and areaways were we kids played ball, tag, and cops and robbers. The stoops' balusters were perfect hiding places, the garden fences just low enough to be vaulted, and the steps good for snipers with water pistols. But brownstones are hard. My little brother took a tumble down one stoop and put his front teeth through his lip. The blood was impressive. Afterward, my pals and I tiptoed by the spot as if the stoop would jump out and grab us.

Atlantic Avenue problematic? In this case, we were allowed to cross only with our parents because the train trestle created blind spots for all the traffic. But we crossed it frequently, on our way to the A train to take us downtown (with A&S and a lot of other department stores) and the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. There was an especially nice fruit and nut store at the intersection of Nostrand and Fulton where the owner always gave my sister (the youngest of the three sibs) a special little gift bag. She was enormously shy and always hid behind my parents' legs, and this small gesture by an old gent no doubt long dead is one of my earliest memories of an adult's (rather than a parent's or family member's) kindness.

Above Atlantic Avenue, the LIRR had a classic, gable-roofed wood train station, painted green and yellow. Atlantic Avenue may have been unattractive and noisy, even then, but the little train station was fanciful, and put us in just the right mood for trips to Montauk and the Hamptons. And what a great way to see Brooklyn, the brownstone streets below the elevated line, the tower of Brooklyn Boys High School in the distance, and the Manhattan skyline beyond that.

Did we ever think of Atlantic Avenue while we played on Dean Street? No. These were two different worlds. One for families and kids, the other for cars and trains. Dean was a great play spot while Atlantic served as both an edge and connection to other places and experiences. (Come to think of it, how appropriate is that for a thoroughfare named after an ocean?)

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 6:52 PM

I think if it sold for $427,450 in 2004, that's about what it is worth plus the cost of renovation.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 8:25 PM

Montrose Morris:

That's good advice to 6.23 and ivanna, and probably the same people would give in the 1950's!

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 8:34 PM

6:52 thanks for that awesome and positive post. Seems like you had a really great time..keep the memories coming. I grew up in Africa which was totally exciting also but this is very different.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 9:15 PM

I love the blanket assessments of an entire nabe based on one street. Get the feeling that the people who call places slums have rarely seen them and make judgements based on the view out the window of their car?

Get out of your bubble.

House is still overpriced.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 9:30 PM

Regards to 6:52pm and his/her rather touching reminiscence of childhood in CH. And to Montrose, for his devotion to, and love of, the neighborhood. Respect to the critics as well. Lord knows, plenty of other neighborhoods, buildings, houses, apartments and condos have gotten ruthlessly and brutally torched on this website, so as for CH taking some shots, welcome to the club. The moral of the story is that nearly anything is capable of being loved, CH too

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 9:32 PM

9:15:

Actually, from what I've learned from friends and colleagues who've grown up in cities around the globe -- Daccra, Rome, Paris, Tokyo, Bombay, etc. -- there are lots of similarities to coming up in my old neighborhood, Crown Heights. There's something to being a city kid, no matter what the country, that's recognizable across continents. I was lucky to grow up in Brooklyn, as are kids there today. It isn't for small town folk, but for people who want to be in the world. You can't put a price on that, which leaves me puzzled about all "flaming" over Crown Heights.

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 11:28 PM

9:15:

I meant Accra. (My finger slipped!)

NOP

Posted by: guest at December 6, 2007 12:10 AM

Monstrose Morris, you always say that you are not going to "take the bait" (i.e. at 3:05), but you always wind up doing it anyway (i.e. at 4:05).

Posted by: guest at December 6, 2007 9:26 AM

I would guess that Montrose and other Crown Heights residents didn't buy their homes for 1.5 million.

Here's the problem: Crown Heights very much may be a great place to live. If the house is nice and affordable, people like myself don't really care if the neighborhood isn't especially fancy, and has some pockets of unattractiveness.

But, I'm not somebody who has the cash to plunk down 1.5 million for a house, and neither are my friends, working professionals with families in NYC. Maybe, at a stretch, we could afford $600,000 for a single family, and a bit more with rental income. Believe it or not, that's alot of money for most people not making more than two hundred thousand a year, or who who don't have some other property in Manhattan they can sell at a huge profit.

People buying 1.5 million single family homes are out of my league, and they often DO care about those other amenities that us less rich folk don't. That's why, all the talk about Atlantic ave not being so bad, etc., is much less relevant when you are talking about the high end market. And yes, you can say this is cheap compared to Manhattan all you want, but that doesn't make it affordable for anyone but the richest of New Yorkers. Does that segment of the market care about the surrounding neighborhood? My guess is yes, which makes this property overpriced.

Posted by: guest at December 6, 2007 11:14 AM

These beautiful blocks in CH must be hidden because whenever I drive along Atlantic it looks bleak, bleak, bleak.

And when heading along Atlantic with my back to Flatbush Ave I look out the right side but never catch site of anything close to nice. Best that can be said is that it looks marginally better than what I see when I look left.

I know, I know, I have to take right turn and check out all the pockets of goodness that are hidden in there.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 6:23 PM

How much of Park Slope Brownstones do you see from 4th ave or Flatbush?

Posted by: guest at December 6, 2007 12:56 PM

I think if it sold for $427,450 in 2004, that's about what it is worth plus the cost of renovation.

Posted by: guest at December 5, 2007 8:25 PM

Baltimore City has Brownstones for more than that, arears like Bolton Hill the prices are above 700k and in Reservoir Hill they are 400k. Brooklyn should be more expensive than Baltimore, and Crown Heights has the Botanical Gardens and borders Propect Pk on the southwest. I have a brownstone to sell in Baltimore that I wish I knew how to add pictures to this comment so I could share.

Posted by: guest at December 6, 2007 1:08 PM

Good question, 12:56.

1:08 - Are Bolton Hill and Reservoir Hill comparable to Crown Heights with respect to income/crime?

Posted by: guest at December 6, 2007 1:21 PM

Reservoir Hill has slipped back quite a bit. I think prices are more in the 250K area these days.

Not doing well at all.

I think crime in both Bolton Hill and Reservoir Hill are probably at or above levels in Crown Heights.

600K people live in all of Baltimore City. And they have about 300 murders a year.

We've got 2.4 million in Brooklyn alone. I'm guessing of the 500 or so murders a year we have in all of NYC, Brooklyn makes up about a third?

In any case, Baltimore has nothin on Brooklyn.

And I love Baltimore.

Posted by: guest at December 6, 2007 1:47 PM

Reservoir Hill makes Crown Heights look like Prospect Heights and Bolton Hill is like FG without the stores.

Posted by: guest at December 6, 2007 2:04 PM

That was confusing, Reservoir Hill is a little worse than ENY and Bolton Hill is their PS.

Posted by: guest at December 6, 2007 2:10 PM