« Co-op of the Day: 9 Pierrepont Street Revisited Streetlevel: New Caribbean Restaurant for Myrtle »

June 4, 2009

House of the Day: 143 Amity Street

We won't dispute the listing's claim that 143 Amity Street is a "timeless brownstone beauty," because that's certainly what the Cobble Hill house is, no doubt about it. But the asking price of $3,900,000 comes in at over $1,000 per foot which seems quite pricey for a 17-footer whose kitchen is "ready for a new touch," no? We're not even sure this house would fetch the ask if it were located on the Brooklyn Heights side of the tracks either. Thoughts?
143 Amity Street [Brown Harris Stevens] GMAP P*Shark

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.brownstoner.com/mte/mt-tb.cgi/10027

Comments

Did you do that entryway, southslope???

Posted by: daveinbedstuy at June 4, 2009 1:18 PM

DREAM ON... not even in PEAK BUBBLE would this house have fetched $3.9 million.

Posted by: bk14 at June 4, 2009 1:18 PM

5 floors and only 3 pics of the innards (no bath/bed/kitch.), and at this silly price?!

oh agent, those collagen lips are leaking into your brain.

Posted by: goldie at June 4, 2009 1:28 PM

uh uh...nice house, but not at that price...

Posted by: miss priss at June 4, 2009 1:36 PM

honestly just obnoxious. when will people just price things realistically already so we can hit bottom and start moving up again. SO annoying.

Posted by: gkw at June 4, 2009 1:45 PM

Gorgeous house, disgusting pricing.

"large kitchen ready for a new touch"

So if they'd renovated it what would the asking price shoot to 5.3MM?

I'm appalled.

Posted by: TownhouseLady at June 4, 2009 1:55 PM

Prime Cobble Hill historic district. Pay up or shut up.
Someone just paid more one block east. Quite a bit more.
Brooklyn Heights without the tourists and Court St workers.
Doesnt get better than this.

Posted by: Petebklyn at June 4, 2009 1:59 PM

Insane pricing. This is a 3000 square foot house with the kitchen located inconveniently and in need of a renovation to boot. The rooms on the middle floors are chopped up, a remnant from its days as a walk-up. I think in the halycon bubble days of 1 year ago, this wouldn't have fetched more than $3.5M, and now it won't go over $3.0M, and likely a lot less if they actually want to sell. There is no functioning market for houses in this price range. The only people willing to sell are those who need to, and the only buyers in the market are cash investors who smell blood in the water. If you need to move a house like this at the present time, you need to start off realistically. Just look at how things worked out for the house in Brooklyn Heights that started off at $4.995M last summer (featured in this week's "Biggest Sales")...they scared everyone away in late 2008/early 2009 and were forced to chop down all the way down to $2.9M. If they had started off reasonably to begin with, maybe they could have landed someone earlier. Something similar will happen here.

Posted by: NorthHeights at June 4, 2009 2:11 PM

Give me a break! Only 17'wide. So what if it's in boring white bread yuppie Cobble Hill. That's not a fabulous block.

Posted by: coppermaven at June 4, 2009 2:12 PM

it's my block and i think it's pretty fabulous.

Posted by: duckumu at June 4, 2009 2:28 PM

Don't see why this would go over 2.5 given the comps.

Posted by: wasder at June 4, 2009 2:33 PM

>Brooklyn Heights without the tourists and Court St workers.>

Also without the Promenade and the subways.

But I get your point. Still, I vote 2.5 mil.

Posted by: denton at June 4, 2009 2:43 PM

great house, prime block, it does not get much better than this in Brooklyn. I say 3 million easy.
The floorplan shows what looks like an elevator on the first floor but it abviously is not one, so what is that box with the X in the parlor floor closet?

Posted by: sam at June 4, 2009 2:44 PM

I agree that cobble hill really at this point shouldn't really be priced lower than bkln heights - sightly less convenient and consistently beautiful but MUCH more fun. and still easy walk to all subways. still price is really annoying.

Posted by: gkw at June 4, 2009 3:34 PM

Despite what some on this blog wish to be true, the people who are looking for "fun" in a neighborhood are by and large not the ones buying townhouses (and setting pricing) in either Brooklyn Heights or Cobble Hill.

Posted by: NorthHeights at June 4, 2009 3:39 PM

i would agree with north heights. park slope ain't too much fun either. most Slopers take themselves very seriously. if you wanna have fun live where the singles are, east village, west village, billyburg, chelsea,

Posted by: sam at June 4, 2009 3:45 PM

a million dollars buys an awful lot of taxi rides to "fun" neighborhoods

Posted by: dirty_hipster at June 4, 2009 4:12 PM

the subways and promenade of brooklyn hts are quite accesible (walkable) from here.
Hey, and I'm only a 5 minute walk (other direction of course). THats worth an extra 500k.

Posted by: Petebklyn at June 4, 2009 4:27 PM

the subways and promenade of brooklyn hts are quite accesible (walkable) from here.
Hey, and I'm only a 5 minute walk (other direction of course). THats worth an extra 500k.

Posted by: Petebklyn at June 4, 2009 4:27 PM

PS 29 is supposed to be great. However, rental prices in Cobble Hill aren't really any different than rental prices in Fort Greene. Or Park Slope. Maybe a little higher, not much. So something seems a bit off.

Posted by: Heather at June 4, 2009 5:00 PM

I think this is zoned ps261 not ps29. But anyway - live in a 3m+ house and send a kid to public school? Bite your tongue. Just a short walk to Packer, St. Ann's, etc.

Posted by: Petebklyn at June 4, 2009 5:06 PM

coppermaven, Amity Street is one of the best blocks in Cobble Hill. It's extra wide, is very safe, half the people on it have lived there their whole lives, and as someone who works in Real Estate, I have clients who only want to be on Amity Street. So it's a great block, and the most recent sale on Amity between Court and Clinton went for 4.9 in January. And yes Pete, it is zoned for 261 but most of the kids on the block do go to Private School.

Posted by: Cobblehillbaby at June 4, 2009 6:25 PM

Nice house. BHS seem to get a lot of the prime listings, but then if they tell sellers they can get 3.9m it's not surprising. Low 3's I say. New kitchen a bit of a turn off.

Posted by: 10thStreetReno at June 4, 2009 6:31 PM

CHBaby, that comp only points to a $3.65M price for this house if you go by size alone (which I wouldn't)...and assumes that another grammy-winner will step up to the plate. Back in the real world, they will be lucky to get $3.0M.

Posted by: NorthHeights at June 4, 2009 8:20 PM

The Norah Jones house is in no way a comp here. That house was wider, on a far nicer (read: away from LICH) section of the next block, and has had a recent and truly mind-blowing reno. 72 Hicks is the new comp: a house some brokers pushed as the nicest in the borough, which slid from an asking near five down to a sale under three. Now, if 72 Hicks, an elegant clapboard house in the heart of the poshest part of Brooklyn, with a lovely renovation, goes for under three, how is everything out there not about to take a 25% minimum haircut from their current bizarro world asking prices?

Posted by: Whuh at June 4, 2009 8:39 PM

Digressing a bit here, but I think the recent Brooklyn Heights sale is almost as useless as a comp as the other Amity Street house. The Heights sellers started out too high and paid the price (no pun intended). Except for Bernie Madoff victims or other people who need the money, people who own $2M+/$3M+ houses are going to sit out the market for a while, or just rent out the house if they need to move, rather than sell low to the bottom-feeders right now. Maybe that will change in X months if the current jumbo financing freeze becomes permanent, but that's the market at least for today.

Posted by: NorthHeights at June 4, 2009 10:02 PM

All due respect, North, I don't think that's how markets work, even one as illiquid as brownstone Brooklyn. It's true that only people who have to sell will sell now; but the motivation of a seller doesn't alter pricing power. What will move prices up after we have six or eight places sell like the Hicks St place did? The sellers who waited will have to sell at the new comp-level, or wait and hope the bar doesn't slip again. This is classic deflation.

I know if I'm looking to buy now, on Amity St., or in Fort Greene, or anywhere in the borough, and I know I could have purchased an historic charmer in prime heights for under three -well, I'm sorry, that's my comp. You want to hold out that's your business, Mr. Seller. But there are going to be more distress sellers then panic buyers going forward --many more. 72 Hicks has set a new bar, and set it quite low.

Posted by: Whuh at June 5, 2009 7:31 AM

You're focusing on one house. I agree that if there are a series of houses that sell at a 25% discount in a neighborhood, that's a trend. But that's a "what if" situation down the road. There's no evidence *yet* of which way townhouse prices are going (at least in Brooklyn Heights), one way or the other. Two houses have sold in the past few months, one at roughly 2008 prices and this one last week. Two house sales are statistically meaningless. I would argue that the recent sale is the less representative one because they spooked the market with their ridiculous opening ask, but that's my opinion.

As for markets, sellers' motivation does matter. You can have all the buyers in the world lining up to get their brownstones half-off in Brooklyn Heights but that doesn't mean they're going to find many (or any) for sale.

Posted by: NorthHeights at June 5, 2009 9:26 AM

NorthHeights -- I think that Whuh's point (with which I mostly agree at least as to the correct comp) is not that sellers' motivations do not matter.

The point (I think) is that if the motivation is to sell in under 3-6 months, the comps are going to be in line with 72 Hicks. If the seller is able/willing to wait up to 12 months or more, you are right. If one assumes that more people are looking to exit in shorter time windows, that motivation is going to bring the price down from this ask by 25% or more.

I don't get the idea that the initial aggressive listing of 72 Hicks caused the sellers to "pay" the price -- it seems unlikely that there were many buyers out there willing to spend $4.1M on the house when it was first listed but were discouraged from bidding because the ask was at $4.95. (Does anyone know if there were bids on 72 Hicks above the final price? I am more than willing to be corrected on this factual point.)

Of coures the crazy thing is that even a 25% drop at this level only brings the house down to $2.95M or so. A 25% drop from the sq. ft. estimate you provided puts us at $2.7M -- which is where I am willing to guess.

The funny thing about everyone assuming the kids will go to Packer or St. Ann's is the assumption that there is enough space to take the kid (setting aside whether the school decides to take him or her.) I think in today's NYC such assumptions are not warranted, and parents expecting private school attendance still need to keep their eye on the "fallback" PS nearby.

Posted by: Boerumresident at June 5, 2009 10:06 AM

I still have to respectfully disagree. My assumptions are: in the next 6 months nothing changes to alter the selling climate, which is dismal; several houses will have to be sold, and they will be at prices normed to 72 Hicks, not 2007; and after 6 months you will have a recent history of sales with which to peg new sales going forward. No one is then going to say, "Oh, those previous sellers had to sell." I know how I feel --I'm in the market for a house at exactly these prices. On what planet would I now consider a three million dollar house in anything but the very nicest parts of Brooklyn, in tip top shape...? I'd have to be pretty gullible to accept the thesis that, Oh, 72 Hicks was a distress sale. Mr. Market has spoken; and he doesn't care whether or not you're distressed.

Posted by: Whuh at June 5, 2009 10:19 AM

I also respectfully disagree, and because I think you're missing the finer points of the Brooklyn Heights market in particular. Even in the recent boom times, only something like 12-15 house were sold a year. In this environment, there have only been 2 sales in the first 5 months of the year. I'm not sure how, in that sample size, you assume the lower of the two prices is the new "norm."

As for the original ask - 135 Joralemon (a similar wood frame house) sold in December 2008 for $4.1 million. Clearly that buyer could have considered 72 Hicks. Whether the high listing price discouraged them or not is speculation, but I think it's legitimate to think there were buyers in the market somewhere north of $2.9M but south of $4.9M.

The guy who bought 72 Hicks is a house investor, he for one thinks he's going to get a nice return on his investment.

Posted by: NorthHeights at June 5, 2009 11:07 AM

But the tighter the market the more a single comp sets prices --and not even at the margin, but at the middle, too! OK, well, our disagreement has no effect on anything; so now we pull up a tub of popcorn and watch.

Posted by: Whuh at June 5, 2009 12:03 PM

went to open house. its not renovate folks..unless you consider installing new very cheap bathrooms. the kitchen is so terrible it ought to be knocked down. I particularly liked the well worn linoleum covering the entire staircase. I do not think the owner poured a dime into this house since they bought it almost 20 years ago. Honestly, they would be luck to get half and even that is too much considering the amount of true renovation that is necessary. Too bad brokers don't have to live by truth in advertising or this one would be in jail.

Posted by: heyelke at June 8, 2009 8:34 AM

I would think 22 Strong Place is a better comp (than 72 Hicks St) on a ppsf basis - it is a 25 footer and sold for $2.055 mil ($475/sqft)

Posted by: tricks73 at June 9, 2009 2:10 PM

Heyelke the owner did not buy the place 20 years ago instead 5 years ago. I checked the city records. My estimate is this should not be more than 1.5 - 1.75 mil. They bought it for little over a mil.

Posted by: MaMa at July 11, 2009 5:43 PM

« Co-op of the Day: 9 Pierrepont Street Revisited Streetlevel: New Caribbean Restaurant for Myrtle »

June 4, 2009

House of the Day: 143 Amity Street

Trackback Pings

Comments

Post a comment

Latest Restaurant Additions