Open House Picks

FG will move.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 1:15 PM

Seriously, there can't be anyone in the world who would pay a million dollars for a Bushwick building in need of serious work. Can there? Has the whole world gone mad?

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 1:19 PM

The bench is for the current owners who know not to leave their kids unattended in the tub. It is furniture though and not a fixture so I'm sure they'll take it with the when they go.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 1:20 PM

the Boerum Hill one is awesome that is sweet...It looks mint... The yard is great as well...

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 1:21 PM

I like the first 3 properties. The FG place looks like it has serious potential--good location, I think. Its 700k less than the BH place, and though it may need a lot of work, it looks inhabitable.

Something tells me the BH place isn't as nice as the realtor babble says...galley kitchen looks cramped, even though I like a galley layout. Guess you could blow out the wall to the dining area. But it looks like a pretty pleasant house otherwise. 2.5m? Close to the Brooklyn Inn, which is a definite plus.

Ditmas house at 1.3m looks to be in the ballpark. Love the porch.

Bushwick place is for potential landlords only.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 1:27 PM

BH is not just mint, it's "truly 'mint'".

Sockpuppet want a tictac?

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 1:28 PM

Bushwick avenue is so sad. There are some great houses down there, an amazing very old dutch church, but the whole place is dirty and decrepit.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 1:32 PM

Biff and Dave add nothing, as usual.

The Ditmas house looks nice.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 1:33 PM

The Boerum Hill house seems reasonably priced, or at least priced right, without much wiggle room. I remember (back when we were looking), a house on that block sold for $2.2 or $2.3, so there hasn't been much of an increase in two years.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 1:47 PM

Interesting -- is the Fort Greene house in a great location? It seems about the same price per square foot as the Carroll Gardens HOTD yesterday, which was slightly more expensive, but bigger. Is Fort Greene more expensive than Carroll Gardens now? I'm not trying to start a debate as to which neighborhood is better, because I already know their strengths and weaknesses. I was just curious as to whether the market prices are higher in one neighborhood over another.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 1:52 PM

Everything in boerum hill will be worth 50% than today withing the next 2 years. Great area to live in & a beautiful one at that.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 2:00 PM

1:26pm keep renting your studio apartment in Red Hook...Great job...

You cant time a market whether it be housing or stocks. When things are on dips you buy when things look awful you buy more. ANd thats whats happening right now with real estate. Homes are not appreciating and are declining a bit but I feel is a great time to buy because prices are negotiable. You cant exactly time the bottom but have the balls to buy when things are down. Things may go a bit lower but who knows but anytime you can negotiate a home its time to buy especially in prime NYC realestate. So keep renting and saving your little pennies and in 5 years you will be still waiting and paying someone else's mortgage...

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 2:00 PM

I happen to think the Boerum Hill bstone is horribly overpriced. 2.4 million and the schools suck! I mean, really suck.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 2:01 PM

2:01pm: Not everyone who buys has kids so schools don't matter. Also, if one can afford 2.5mm then they're not sending their kids to PS321 or whatever it be called. Private skool, my man.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 2:03 PM

2.3 million dollars for a house in the Boros with no property seems like so much money to me.
God bless the seriously rich people who buys it. How rich do you have to be to afford a 2.3 million dollar house in the current economic downturn? the mind reels.
it is a very nice house though. not a mansion really, but a nice house. For a celebrity millionaire or a financier.
only in Brooklyn kids!

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 2:05 PM

HEY!! The fake what does NOT live in Red Hook. A pack of dogs would eat him.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 2:06 PM

You really don't have to be rich to afford a 2.3 million dollar house. Yes, if you're 27 and it's your first place, you need to be rich. But if you're in your forties, have been on the property ladder for a while and bought and sold judiciously, you will have sizeable equity. We started out with a co-op that cost less than $200,000, and after selling and buying three more times, ended up with a $2 million brownstone 15 years later. The trick for us was to keep paying down the mortgages and build up equity so that we were a able to put 50% down on our current place and keep the mortgage payments low. Also, we have tenants and the rent is vital to help us make our mortgage payments. In a place like New York you can always find tenants, so I don't think that's such a risk.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 2:17 PM

"Everything in boerum hill will be worth 50% than today"

You forgot the word "less."

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 2:17 PM

2:12 you are a genius...Who cares? I am sure they will get some offers around 2million...

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 2:17 PM

Boerum hill is great. Why wouldnt you send your kid to public school there. Your kid will be taught arabic in school which will be much more useful than french or german. Seems like a deal to me.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 2:19 PM

PS 261 is a great school. People from Park Slope and elsewhere pull strings to get into it.
I'm not saying whether the house is worth it or if BH is a nice nabe.
But the school is not a reason to buy elsewhere, unless you are a troll or want to go elsewhere for other reasons.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 2:26 PM

Dave, you think that the Bushwick and Boerum Hill places look nice? I think they seem WAY overpriced. Completely out of step.

I think the Ditmas Park and FG places are nice.. Within the range anyway.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 2:31 PM

There looks to be wallpaper in every room in the Ditmas house. If interested in the house be sure to keep in mind the cost to remove it all and re-surface and prep the walls for painting.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 2:49 PM

Re, Boerum Hill there's about 20 kids are the Arabic school which isn't the local elementary school. The only people who would have kids at that school are those who specifically want them there.

PS, I lived in Carroll Gardens and Boerum Hill for over 20 years and sent my kids to private school until they they were high school age. We were zoned for PS 29 back in the mid 1990s when our kids were elementary school age, looked at the school but didn't think it was so great. So sent our kids elsewhere. A lot of the negative things people say about PS 38 now are what we said about PS 29 back then.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 2:54 PM

Re: Boerum Hill house, it's nice enough but it's a really boring house with nonspectacular details. I'd be depressed spending $2.5 MM on it.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 2:58 PM

I bought a house in the Ditmas park area a couple of years ago that is a bit bigger than this one. I had all the walls replastered and repainted and it cost me about $8,000. I had some really high quotes and a couple lower than this, but the guys I picked were highly recommended by a neighbor. It really doesn't cost that much. Now kitchens and baths...that is another story.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 2:58 PM

For the slow (Dave), HOTD is all about homes for sale, the price, the condition, etc. Maybe you are the one who misunderstands this whole thread.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 2:59 PM

The "Arabic" school which is the Khalil Gibran school is a middle school. The woman who should have been the principal was a teacher at 261 but was tapped for bigger and better things at the DOE. Currently, Khalil Gibran is in the same building as Math and Science but I understand it is moving to Fort Greene.

My child made the 29 gifted program about ten years ago. I didn't think it was a good fit and PS 58 was even more traditonal which is why we ended up at 261.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 3:05 PM

I'm sorry, but even if you are in your forties and you have climbed the so-called equity ladder as I have, 2.5 million is a huge sum. huge. No way I'm going to go out on such a limb with my equity. I'll stick to stocks and bonds and maybe buy a little place in the booies for the weekends -where I can get away from all this real estate hype.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 3:32 PM

Boring. None of these houses are in Park Slope, which is the only neighborhood I am looking in.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 3:32 PM

Or perhaps an idiot is someone who bought and got stuck with a place in Bed Stuy in a declining housing market.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 3:42 PM

Walking past this http://www.bhsbrooklyn.com/detail.asp?id=729018 yesterday morning I saw the For Sale sign had gone up.

If this is worth over $4m then $2.5 for Dean Street seems fair enough. No?

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 4:02 PM

We've narrowed our search to the North Slope. Why no properties there? I never seen any highlighted here...

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 4:02 PM

PShark says that Clermont house closed for $1.4M on Dec. 28, 2007! FG on pace for 50% rise in '08! Everyone get on the bandwagon!

Um, yeah.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 4:07 PM

Putting the what and other lunatics aside.
don't most of us think that brooklyn real estate is wildly over-valued? Do we really think these prices will will keep rising?
Unless you're printing money in your basement, this stuff is out of reach. Fine for Manhattan and Paris but Brooklyn?

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 4:10 PM

Yeah, where's the love for the Slope. I'm packed and ready to go. Already got my bugaboo. Just need to find my $3 mil brownstone and my fantasy will be nearly complete.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 4:19 PM

Biff, there are very few 3+ beds and 3 plus baths in any Brooklyn Brownstone neighborhood.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 4:23 PM

I really liked this blog way back, before the likes of Dave and Biff decided they knew it all, posted on it all, and came off as jackasses

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 4:26 PM

there's no chance that areas like Bushwick aren't going to be the first to really depreciate.

Bed Stuy? Good luck with that.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 4:30 PM

BORING houses.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 4:47 PM

Did anyone notice the Corcoran description of the Dean St. house states there is a "monumental arch" on the parlor floor?

Hhahahahaha...

I guess if you get bored you can process around and then march through it. L'Arc de Triomphe in your own living room...

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 5:32 PM

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 6:01 PM

"The woman who should have been the principal was a teacher at 261 but was tapped for bigger and better things at the DOE."

No, that would not be correct. She was forced to resign. She then filed a lawsuit against the DOE which she subsequently lost and is now appealing.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 6:18 PM

The FG house could be very nice once reno'd.

I found the FG house's broker's website inadequate. And the photos on the NYT's listing are ugly. Could probably have been better.

I would definitely snap up this house if it were 200K less. I wonder if it is *that* negotiable.

I wonder how much work it needs.

Anyone care to do a qwik estimate what it would run to do 4 baths, 3 kitchens, windows, elec., floors and cosmetic work?

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 6:49 PM

FYI: 631 3rd Street is having an open house on SATURDAY, if anyone wants to gawk:

http://www.bhsbrooklyn.com/detail.asp?id=903618

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 7:24 PM

Haven't you heard? Bushwick is the next Williamsburg, which is the next Park Slope. In 10 years that $925K investment will be worth ten times that or more! Heck, in 30 years that one house can pay off the entire national debt, especially after all those UWS'ers move over here from Manhattan like all you in the know seem to believe. I bet in 30 years houses in Park Slope will be close to a billion each so if youre young and in your 30's buy all you can. Banks who already know that same thing will be bending over backwards to hand you the money with nothing down. All you dreamers in the know keep right on dreaming. After the Iran war that will be starting about election time and the ensuing depression, we will all be in the soup lines. But go ahead, buy that million dollar Bushwick piece of crap. It's ghettofabulous.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 7:55 PM

the largest potential real estate problem that I see facing the borough is that everyone decided they wanted to live here in what seemed like a blink of an eye. This would suggest that the opposite could be true. In no time, Brooklyn could be out, done. over, and where will that leave the owner of a 2.5 million dollar antique residence on Dean Street?

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 8:03 PM

6:18 Yes she was forced to resign but prior to starting Khalil Gibran she was in the Region 8 office (I forget in what capacity but I think it had to do with afterschool programs) and prior to that she was a teacher at 261. Sorry if I wasn't clear. Anyway, she was a great teacher.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 9:01 PM

Yes, she was 9:01. It is amazing what a very wealthy political lobby can accomplish. Getting rid of a person who put her all into her profession was a shame.

The Academy was supposed to introduce non-Arabic speaking students to the arabic language and culture. Not to proselytize but to teach children, who pick up languages much easier than adults, a very difficult language. Speakers of Arabic are in great need and the need will continue to grow as the "war on terror" continues/expands.

Posted by: guest at June 6, 2008 10:22 PM

"She got in trouble for making shirts that say "infatada nyc". The actual meaning of the word is innocuous, so she disregarded the fundamentalist and Palestinian connotations. She has said she didnt mean anything by it (which I personally believe), and she certainly didnt realize that people would go nuts and go after her head."

That's kind of silly, that anyone, especially a Muslim and Arabic speaker, would not see a potential issue with that. Come on.

Posted by: guest at June 7, 2008 9:55 AM

She was a great teacher and sadly the story is as has been described by Slick, a teacher caught up in highly visible position with no preparation. If you knew her personally I think most of you wouldn't be so critical. She made a mistake that turned into a nightmare. This could happen to anyone.

Posted by: guest at June 7, 2008 9:58 AM

The people who were against this woman started their campaign long before she made those t-shirts. The unwise t-shirts were quite convenient for their cause.

The key women against this school were heavily biased. They started their letter-writing campaigns before knowing anything about this woman or her school. The moment they got a whiff of any type of Arabic public school. That just tells the whole story, that fact.

Yes the school wasn't entirely well planned and it should not have been run by a complete novice to politics. But I have a HUGE problem with any protest like this fueled by racism. It's thoroughly disgusting and they should not have been rewarded by "winning" their little protest against this woman and her school.

Posted by: guest at June 7, 2008 11:12 AM

"The unwise t-shirts were quite convenient for their cause."

That's a big "slip". Especially if you know you're already under scrutiny. Stupid. Very stupid. In general, mistakes cost people their jobs and more. So, she should suck it up and move on.

Posted by: guest at June 7, 2008 12:02 PM

Um, hmm, didn't say it wasn't stupid, 12:02. I also did not say I thought she thought she was qualified to run the school.

Wasn't my point. Like at all.

Your attempted defense of this racist campaign is lame.

Posted by: guest at June 7, 2008 4:07 PM

She didn't "make" the t-shirts. She failed to condemn the kids who made them loudly enough. This was a campaign against the idea that Americans should learn Arabic, nothing more.

Posted by: guest at June 7, 2008 5:56 PM

i cant wait for all u rich manhattanites to move to bushwick and bed stuy.all the stick- up kids in the projects will be very welcoming. WINCK-WINCK.after that go try to move to brownsville and east new york.

Posted by: guest at June 7, 2008 9:16 PM

10:22 here Polemicist,

You are 100% correct. Of course as a speaker of Arabic, I know this. I was kind of being sarcastic. Many people, although not many who have posted here, think that the reason that I stated for learning Arabic are the only reason that any true blue American should kearn it. Thanks for pointing out the other reasons.

Posted by: guest at June 8, 2008 9:03 AM

yeah slick, u should come hang out some time.come to Roosevelt Houses where i live.like i said very welcoming around here.be sure to wear ur ball hugger jeans and ur tight ass shirt.

Posted by: guest at June 8, 2008 8:12 PM

DID ANYONE GO TO THE OPEN HOUSES?

WOULD LIKE FEEDBACK.

Posted by: guest at June 9, 2008 11:19 AM

Went to FG pick. Needs much work but location is kick-ass. Like I said at June 6, 2008 1:15 PM, it'll move at that price. If I'm wrong, I'll be looking to move it myself for a little less.

Posted by: guest at June 9, 2008 12:59 PM

12:59,
What is your estimate on the cost of reno'ing the FG house?

Does it need systems updated or replaced (furnace, HWH, wiring, piping, waste stack, heating pipes, new windows, new kitchens/baths and associated plumbing? Looks like it needs chimney/fireplace work as well.

Hard to tell what it'll cost if these things cannot be figured in.

Didn't get to the OH personally and would rather not have to schedule with the broker.

Thanks!

Posted by: guest at June 9, 2008 4:23 PM