Co-op of the Day: 111 Hicks Street, #18F

Whoa, as a regular Brownstoner reader, I was not surprised to see a bunch of posts from readers who seem to have nothing better to do than idly speculate about a place they have never set foot in and haven't even so much as done 30 seconds research about the building or the neighborhood on Street Easy. But I will admit that it did bother me that these posts were about the building that I call home, so I thought I would post a little information to set the record straight.

As I do live in the building and have also been on the Board in the past, I will be the first to tell you that this apartment is way overpriced. But instead of making unfounded accusations against people you have never even met, I think one has to acknowledge that Halstead (as well as the owner) has to take some responsibility for this figure. I know from looking at other listings in the nabe, that Halstead as well as other realtors tends to overprice a lot of their properties just to see what will stick.

17C, just below it, which is the same layout and an even better renovation, just sold for $360,000, which I thought was too high but clearly someone wanted it, probably for the views which are pretty fabulous.

Yes, the maintenance in the building is high, but the finances themselves are in excellent shape, due to the diligence and acumen of the current board. In the past, when the real estate market has not been overheated, the prices in the building have been lower than in comparable buildings in the neighborhood as they they have reflected the high maintenenance. (Those studios near 300K could have been bought for $25,000 in the early and mid 1990s:) It's only in the tail end of the irrational exuberance of the NYC real estate market that prices in our building have become often unrealistic.

FYI, the maintenance is high for several reasons that are way more complicated than I could detail here, but to give you an idea:

-taxes are high in the neighborhood and for the building, as has been pointed out here previously
-it's an old building that requires a lot of upkeep
-the original developer that did the conversion took out a lot of money from the plan and saddled the building with a very high underlying mortgage which is being paid down but still substantial 25 years later.
-also the conversion was not done to last and there had been a lot of deferred maintenance, until the last seven or eight years when the predecessors of the current board started addressing these problems which unfortunately also increased costs
-it's a totally full service building--24 hour doorman, live in super, on site manager and porters and cleaning staff on from 7 AM to midnight seven days a week
-as an extra large building, we get saddled with increased costs, such as added insurance (which went way up after 9/11), and extra RE taxes on top of the high rate.

All that said, the building is home to almost 300 units, all of them occupied by friendly people of all walks of life. The building has a longstanding reputation of being friendly and open to people of all sorts of backgrounds and preferences, unlike many other buildings in the neighborhood, and that's why many shareholders in the coop have chosen to live in the building.

Posted by: 111hicks at June 30, 2009 1:25 AM