House of the Day: 691 St. Johns Place

Brownstoner:

This looks like an attractive corner of my old neighborhood, Crown Heights, where I grew up during the 1950s.

I especially like the short streets leading into St. John's, giving it a character similar to the the "place" streets in Park Slope.

And zoom in on the Google aerial. The blocks are full of backyard trees, nice counterpoints to the limestone-fronted streets.

Ideally this would be a single family house, or have an owner's duplex with a rental unit at "garden level" (with a screened in patio for the renter's use, leaving the rest of the yard for the owner).

But today's stock market is down to 1997 levels! People are losing boat loads of money, and there's no sign of let up.

Expect price percent reductions in the double digits across all of New York over the next 12 to 18 months -- and plan accordingly.

(Along Park Avenue owners are pulling apartments for sale because there are no buyers. Even the fabled Astor apartment has been reduced by a third -- and this is a penthouse directed at a market for whom "money is no object"!)

Nostalgic in Park Avenue

Posted by: NOP at March 2, 2009 3:26 PM

Thanks for the invitation, Biff. I won't be in town March 19, but Brownstoners will have a lot to talk about that evening, given the state of the market!

And Pierre, a house like this offers an interesting opportunity: an inter-generational household in which a family with kids lives in the "duplex" and grandparents live at the garden level, helping to reduce expenses while consolidating assets.

This was a typical pattern in Crown Heights during the 1950s, when mortgages for places in racially-integrated neighborhoods were hard to get. Between generations there might be enough cash to own a house free and clear, while kids had the advantage of elders in their day-to-day life and the "grands" were watched over by their adult children.

My family lived in an apartment, so this wasn't our pattern, but several of my friends with houses did. And it was fun to sit at the dining table with youngsters and old people. It made even ordinary days Thanksgiving!

And it needn't be intergenerational. Sibs might share a house like this and, if there are kids, rotate care-giving responsibilities.

I'd still wait on purchasing, though. Prices will tumble between 25% and 50% from their current reduced levels -- possibly more! -- and will take a long time to recover. Remember the late 80s - early 90s? And that recession was relatively soft, not the world-wide crash we see today.

I had dinner with Sister Woman my last visit to New York. The East Side restaurant, ordinarily very popular, was half empty. "It's been this way," she said, "ever since the nonsense started."

"That's what we'll call it," I said. "The Nonsense Decade."

She agreed.

Welcome to the Nonsense Decade!

NOP

Posted by: NOP at March 2, 2009 4:32 PM