Open House Picks

a long debut post...

hi everyone. i'm cautiously looking to buy in bed stuy right. i'm still at an early stage and to be honest haven't yet got a proper sense of comparative prices. a few observations however having inspected the stuyvesant property a short while back...

the location indeed is good, across from the park, although personally for me it is a bit too close to fulton.

the house itself is not renovated...i think that is rather misleading. its basic, but does have a charm. the overriding problem for me however is that there is no back yard and it backs almost right onto the neighboring property, so I found it rather dark and gloomy...bordering on depressing. i guess for the right price you could put in some $ and do some creative work with skylights etc, but personally I think there are better properties around with better 'bones'.

for what it is worth, trulia and the press (read bkln heights courier article today) are quoting 25% price drop in the area in the last quarter!, so i guess form its original asking price of around 900k that would put it in the high 600ks.

its so hard to know the price of things right now. a lot of the reported results are from houses signed in dec and jan. even since then there has been huge movement and changes in perceptions. agents are still listing things very high, but i really don't see the point. having been to a dozen or some open homes and more often than not being the only one there other than nosey neighbors i personally don't feel any urgency at all to move quickly. i even had an agent admit to me the other day about a rather nice home (larger, renovated, orginal detail and with full yard, good block) which has already had a price drop of 200k, that even since the price drop he had not had a single offer in two months, let alone a low ball offer. when i do find a place that i'm fully happy with, to be candid, i will negotiate very hard and can honeslty say i will be totally relaxed about walking away if the sellers don't move. to be frank there are so many options right now for me as a buyer and i don't see the risk of major u-turn quickly that would compel me to do otherwise.

it will be good all round when the true comparables start to come out as that will in fact make buyers like me more comfortable in making decisions to start making offers and in turn from sellers' perspective perhaps the market will start ticking over a bit.

thanks btw to everyone who posts here. from a potential buyers perspective i do find all the debates very helpful. so appreciated guys. no offense to any one though, i would be curious to hear the views of more serious potential buyers not just existing owners...

cheers everyone.

Posted by: lookingforabrownstone at April 17, 2009 7:15 PM