November 3, 2009

The Gingerbread House Hits the Market

The Gingerbread House, the famous Arts & Crafts residence designed by architect James Sarsfield Kennedy, is for sale. (While it is more popularly known as the Gingerbread House, Forgotten NY points out that its formal name is the Howard E. and Jessie Jones House.) The 5,800-square-foot structure of uncut stone sits on a verdant one-acre lot at 8220 Narrows Avenue just a block from the waterfront. With its thatched roofs and endless interior architectural details, the 1916 house is definitely one of a kind. And it comes with a one-of-a-kind price tag of $12,000,000. This should be interesting.
8220 Narrows Avenue [Brown Harris Stevens] GMAP

November 2, 2009

First Resale at 14 Townhouses

It had to happen sometime! The 14 Townhouses on State Street received a lot of attention, most of it positive, when they hit the market back in 2005. It took a little while (and some time off the market) to get the job done, but ultimately all of them sold for prices of between $2 and $3 million. More than four years after, we've arrrived at a milestone in the project's history: The first resale. The house in question is 267 State Street, the one on the corner of Smith Street. It's got more than 4,000 square feet of space and doesn't look any worse for the wear. The asking price? $3,600,000. We shall see.
267 State Street [Corcoran] GMAP
14 Townhouses, After Slow '06, Go Gangbusters [Brownstoner]
14 Townhouses Update: Slow Going, At Best [Brownstoner]

October 30, 2009

Church Conversion Opp for Sale in Greenpoint

How sweet would this be? Yesterday Curbed picked up on an unusual listing that just hit the market in Greenpoint. A former church and adjacent Sunday School building at 145-147 Kent Street just hit the market for a cool $3,700,000. For this modest tithe, y ou get over 8,000 square feet of existing interior space plus another few thousand square feet of buildable rights. Evidently the owner has already received permission from the Landmarks Preservation Commission for the residential conversion and associated cosmetic changes. Start passing that collection plate!
147 Kent Street [Douglas Elliman] GMAP
Church Mansion Comes With or Without Sunday School [Curbed]

Waterless in Bed Stuy

Yesterday The Brooklyn Ink published a sad story about the plight of the tenants at the small three-story apartment building at 274 Malcom X Boulevard in Bed Stuy. Last winter the 16 residents went without electricity, and last summer they had to do without water for two months. The problem was not a negligent landlord, but a dead one. And a deadbeat family member who wanted to collect rent but not perform any repairs. The building residents didn't realize for months that the landlord had died last year; when they finally figured it out and one of them tried to navigate the bureaucracy involved with getting services restored when you are not the owner, they hit a wall. It took a protest by a local with political aspirations to draw enough attention to the problem for HPD to step in a make basic repairs. Positively Kafkaesque.
Bed-Stuy’s Waterless House [The Brooklyn Ink]

October 23, 2009

Work in Progress at Christie's Red Hook Warehouse

A couple of months ago a Christie's spokesman told the Times that the auction company intends to have its storage facility on Imlay Street in Red Hook tricked out by January, and if that's to be the case the crew on the project sure has its work cut out. Per the pics above, the building is in the process of being gutted. Looks like a massive undertaking!
storage facility [Brownstoner] GMAP

October 16, 2009

Owner Takes Park Slope's Pink House Off Market

Local media were abuzz recently when Park Slope's hard-to-miss pink brownstone on Garfield Place went on the market for nearly $2.3 million, but The Brooklyn Paper reported yesterday that Heights Berkeley Realty, the firm selling the house, took the property off the market due to legal complications. The grandson of owner Bernie Henry, who painted the house bright pink in the 1960s, "is under investigation for forging key documents that have put a cloud over who has legal ownership of the building," according to the Paper. As for the ostentatious color of the home, the article mentions that of course a buyer could repaint it, but one local resident commented: "It’s like anything else in life: at first, you hate it because it’s new. But then you come to love it. And then you don’t want it to ever change."
Famed Pink House Pulled Off Market in Legal Dispute [Brooklyn Paper]
Park Slope's Pink House 4 Sale [Gothamist]
Photo by Karen Bonna Rainert

October 14, 2009

The Locale: Greenpoint Condo Auction

The Locale, a four-story, 16-unit luxury development in Greenpoint from TreeTop Development, is going on the auction block November 11, reports Curbed. This is the sign of the times that the media and real estate business have been expecting—developers have already opted to unload their stagnant projects elsewhere, but this is the first in Brooklyn. The building, at 267-269 Kingsland Avenue, offers one-bedroom and one-bedroom duplex units, some with balconies and views of the Manhattan skyline. The auction will be held at the New York Marriott, 333 Adams Street, at 7:30 p.m., where bids will start at $150,000—as low as 25 percent of the original asking prices of $445,000 to $600,000. points out that Brooklyn condo sales dropped nearly 30 percent in the second quarter, and median sales prices fell 16 percent. GMAP P*Shark DOB
First Condo Auction Looms in Brooklyn [Crain's]
On the Block: New Greenpoint Condos Heading to Auction! [Curbed]
The Locale Auction Listing [Sheldon Good & Co]

October 9, 2009

Reno Action at 50 Putnam

After initially being listed at $850,000 last spring (when it was an Open House Pick), the four-story brick house at the southeast corner of Putnam Avenue and Irving Place in Clinton Hill sold last month for $695,000. The new owner has wasted no time getting down to the business of renovation, a fact that made another neighbor so gleeful that he couldn't help snapping this photo and sending it in to the Brownstoner tip line. According to the DOB permit, there's no change to the 3-family C of O but the place is getting a complete gut renovation, in case you couldn't tell from all the debris in the back yard. Interestingly, the architect of record is Pratt's Brent Porter, he of the many Save-Admirals-Row designs. GMAP

So Long, Slope Socksmith

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A construction fence recently went up in the gutted building on 5th Avenue between Degraw and Sackett that's hosted the Socksmith—that guy who sold socks, belt buckles and other stuff—for some time now. (Here is Park Slope had an interesting writeup about him a few months back.) We're not likely to see the Socksmith in that location again because DOB permits show the space is being renovated, and a person working in the vintage shop next door, which is called Monkey Whistles and Motor Bikes, said they'd be moving into the fixed-up digs when construction's complete. GMAP DOB

October 5, 2009

280 Hicks Up For Auction

As Curbed reported last week, the rundown but beautiful carriage house at 280 Hicks Street in Brooklyn Heights will go up for auction next Tuesday. The house belonged to Alfred Palmer, who also used to own 135 Joralemon Street and was something of a neighborhood character. The starting bid for the 2,875-square-foot house is $2,000,000, which might be a little aggressive considering it's a candidate for a complete gut renovation. (Does anyone know what happens if it fails to sell?) Other properties up for sale that day include a Remsen Street co-op and a couple of Bed Stuy townhouses. GMAP

September 28, 2009

Ceiling Collapse Shuts Down Slope Synagogue

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On Thursday night a section of ceiling collapsed inside Congregation Beth Elohim's synagogue on Garfield Place and 8th Avenue, and the structural damage closed down the house of worship's sanctuary for high holiday services this weekend. The congregation held most of its weekend services at the Old First Reformed Church on Carroll and 7th Avenue. The following email was sent out on Friday about the collapse: "Sometime last night, a large section of our Main Sanctuary's balcony ceiling collapsed. The pieces of plaster are large and quite heavy. We are all so extremely lucky that no one was hurt. After House Committee Co-Chair Susan Doban called in a structural engineer for a full assessment and recommendations for next steps, we were advised that several other sections of the ceiling are compromised and that it is unsafe to sit in certain sections of the Sanctuary until repairs have been made." A Daily News story on the collapse noted that after the holidays had passed, services at Beth Elohim would be held in the synagogue's other two buildings on 8th Avenue. Beth Elohim's website says its sanctuary was completed in 1909.
Old First Reformed Church to House Congregation Beth Elohim [NY Daily News]
Congregation Beth Elohim [Official Site] GMAP

July 31, 2009

Whole Foods Lot Now a Tagger's Paradise

While the Whole Foods will-they-or-won't-they drama continues, the grocery's lot on 3rd Street and 3rd Ave has seen some large-scale beautification over the past several months. GMAP

July 17, 2009

Brooklyn Heights Montessori School Expanding

12%20dean%2007-2009.jpg
The Brooklyn Heights Montessori School is expanding its campus to include the old fire patrol station at 12 Dean Street. The school paid $1.9 million for 12 Dean in a deal that was recorded in public records this week. According to a press release sent out on the expansion, "the fire patrol station sits directly behind BMHS’s existing Bergen Street property. It is expected that the new property will be open and ready to admit as many as 40 to 50 new students in the next two years." The fire patrol building has an interesting history that the Eagle wrote about recently: "The Brooklyn firehouse was, in fact, one of three remaining fire fighting operations of what was once a large network belonging to the New York Board of Fire Underwriters. Fire Patrol members acted as an auxiliary force in the city for over 200 years...Despite its union’s claim that it saved $80 million worth of assets annually, the consortium of insurance companies that paid for its operation, decided it was too costly to maintain and voted to disband the last three units of the Fire Patrol in 2006." GMAP P*Shark
Photo from Property Shark.

July 10, 2009

Red Hook Townhouse Project Not Flying Off Shelf

Apparently buyers are not willing to pay a kingly sum for the new Tuscan-style townhouses in Red Hook. Four of the newly-constructed homes at 93, 95,97 and 99 King Street hit the market last August at $1,300,000 while a fifth was priced at $750,000. None of them have sold to date, prompting two price cuts in the last three months that, Curbed noticed earlier this week, have brought the asking price on the four larger properties down to $999,000. The main living spaces with the concrete floors look kinda cool (as long as you don't place a premium on natural light) but the upstairs bedrooms aren't cutting it in the looks department for us. Plus, these houses are only 2,000 square feet, so the new asking price only brings the cost down to $500 per foot.
146 Richards Street [StreetEasy] GMAP
Red Hook Townhouse Project On the Market [Brownstoner]
"Tuscan" Townhouses Coming to Red Hook [Brownstoner]

July 7, 2009

59 Orient, Half-Butchered, Is Back on the Block

The story of 59 Orient Avenue is a sad one. The 6,000-square-foot former squat had never been landmarked when it came up for sale a couple of years ago and the house came with the kind of lot size and accompanying FAR that makes developers drool. Ultimately, someone ponied up $1,725,000 (a good deal less than the asking price of $2,500,000) and started ripping it to shreds, though it's unclear what the ultimate goal was because only a single building permit was filed and it only referenced relatively minor renovation activities and did not seek to change the C of O. Regardless, the owner managed to do a world of damage before losing his mojo. Now, notes the blog Flavorwire, the house is back on the market with a broker named Capri Jet. The asking price is $1,389,000 and, according to the broker, it needs a total gut.
59 Orient Avenue Listing [Capri Jet]
Open Letter to Michel Gondry: Buy This House [Flavorwire]
Another One Bites the Dust? [Brownstoner] GMAP P*Shark
House of the Day: Endangered on Orient Avenue [Brownstoner]

532 Clinton Avenue Is In Fact For Sale

We've been curious about the woodframe mansion at 532 Clinton Avenue since we moved into the neighborhood (we wrote about it back in 2006). A few weeks ago we noticed a sign that looked like it was from a realtor but it wasn't very clear and we couldn't track down a listing online. So we were excited to get a tip from a reader who had come across a listing for the property. In addition to the 18 (!) bedrooms, the 6,780-square-foot house has side parking and a front lawn. Of course, we were disappointed that there weren't any interior photos, which always makes us skeptical about what kind of shape the place is in. As for the asking price of $3,500,000, we'll believe it when we see it. After all, the better-located mansion at 275 Washington Avenue failed to find a buyer last year at its reduced price of $3,200,000.
532 Clinton Avenue [FRS Realty] GMAP P*Shark
Head-Scratching at 532 Clinton Avenue [Brownstoner]

April 7, 2009

This House Is Getting Cheap

This three-story house at 582 Lexington Avenue (at Lewis) just had its price reduced by $100,000 to $375,000. This ain't the greatest block in Bed Stuy (there's a long stretch of newish two-story homes just to the west) and we've got no idea what the interior is like but the house appears to be intact and perfectly well cared for. Unfortunately for the seller, it was purchased two years ago for $595,000. How low can something like this go? GMAP

March 19, 2009

A Walk Through 72 Hicks Street

New York Magazine takes a video tour through the 1820s Federal townhouse at 72 Hicks Street in Brooklyn Heights. As you may recall, this was a House of the Day back in November 2008.
Walk-Through: 72 Hicks Street [New York Magazine]
House of the Day: 72 Hicks Street [Brownstoner]
72 Hicks Street [Corcoran] GMAP
72 Hicks Street [Kevin Carberry] P*Shark

March 17, 2009

Liebman Mansion Interior Revealed

When we posted the news of the Julius Liebman mansion at 380 Clinton Avenue hitting the market last month, there was much speculation about the state of the interiors. Well, now that there's an online listing, we can all see for ourselves. Personally, it looks much nicer than we expected.
Listing: Landmark Mansion Carriage House [NY Times]
Julius Liebman Mansion Hits the Market [Brownstoner]

March 16, 2009

Slave Theater Hits The Market

The historic Slave Theater at 1215 Fulton Street at Bedford Avenue in Bed Stuy has had a rocky road of late, what with the legal complications surrounding the tragic final years of its former owner Judge John Phillips; Phillips was declared legally incompetent in 2001 and his affairs were placed in the hands of court-appointed guardians who then proceeded to display their own brand of incompetence by racking up close to $2 million in tax debts to the U.S. Government and helping themselves money they were not entitled to. Phillips died last year and an Ohio-based nephew is now in charge of settling his estate. Now the Slave Theater is on the market through Massey Knakal for $2,950,000; the Phillips-owned Black Lady Theater is also currently available. The Slave Theater never received landmark protection, so let's hope that whoever buys it doesn't go nuts with the 25,000 square feet of buildable space that's now allowed because of a recent rezoning. Interestingly, Massey Knakal also is marketing the property to the rear of the Slave Theater owned by the Cush School. Who would be the ideal buyer of this place? Are there any artists who got their start here who've gone on to make a ton of dough who could step up to the plate?
1215-17 Fulton Street [Massey Knakal]GMAP
Slave Theater in Court, Preservation Effort Weak [Brownstoner]

March 13, 2009

110 Amity Price Revealed, Buyers Circling

When we broke the news earlier this week that 110 Amity Street and four adjacent lots had been put back on the market by the developer, the price of the Lamm Institute building itseld had not been posted. Now it is: $4,500,000 gets you the 14,000-square-foot French Renaissance mansion. The five properties are asking a combined $9,535,000; the developer paid a total of $6,125,000 in '07. Judging from this photo from yesterday afternoon, though, the listing is already generating some interest. No surprise: This would make a pretty killer single-family home!
110 Amity Back Up for Sale [Brownstoner] GMAP
110 Amity: LPC Says Yes to Lamm, No to Townhouses [Brownstoner]
110 Amity Proposal Takes a Drubbing at LPC Hearing [Brownstoner]
Cobble Hill Association: 110 Amity Plan ‘Unacceptable’ [Brownstoner]
Opposition to 110 Amity Plans Grows [Brownstoner]
CB6 Tries to Avoid Amity Street Horror [Brownstoner]

March 10, 2009

Price Cut at 615 3rd Street

Sex doesn't sell these days—at least not without a price cut or two. The glorious 4,500-square-foot brick-and-limestone house at 615 3rd Street in Park Slope started out asking $3,800,000 back in February (when it got the HOTD treatment) but scaled back its expectations with a $400,000 trim yesterday. What's it gonna take to get this deal done? If you had this kinda dough, what would you buy right now? GMAP

March 2, 2009

38 Putnam Cleaning Up Its Act

As those in the area have probably noticed, the abandoned lot at 38 Putnam Avenue in Clinton Hill has been getting cleaned up lately. Long a dumping ground and sometimes campground, the 52-foot-wide property's changing looks are the result of a City order to the neglectful owner, according to a friendly resident of the building next door. (This explanation makes since given the lack of any DOB filings on record.) It's too bad people don't have enough respect for their communities to keep their properties presentable without legal threats. Then again, it doesn't look like the owner lives nearby—at least judging by addresses on the slew of insider deed transfers in recent years. GMAP P*Shark

February 26, 2009

Julius Liebman Mansion Hits the Market

The 1909 neo-Federal mansion at 378-384 Clinton Avenue in Clinton Hill has just hit the market with an asking price of $5,500,000. The 9,200-square-foot house is located on a 13,500-square-foot lot and comes with a carriage house fronting on Vanderbilt Avenue. Called "one of the most beautiful houses in Clinton Hill" by Landmarks Preservation Commission, 380 Clinton Avenue was built for Julius Liebman, an heir of the brewing company that later became Rheingold, by the architectural firm of Herts & Tallant, which also designed the Brooklyn Academy of Music. There was a small fire on the second floor last spring. The listing broker is Crosstown Companies; there's nothing on the firm's website, but you can call 718-937-8100 if interested. GMAP

February 24, 2009

Clinton Avenue 'Haunted House' in Contract

We have been, with good reason, on the edge of our seats wondering about the future of 405 Clinton Avenue, the turn-of-the-century William Tubby design that came on the market last September after many years of neglect. Given the shape of the house and the state of the market, the initial asking price was laughable at $3,995,000. By November the price had been reduced to $2,995,000, a price that still seemed unrealistic—one person we spoke to who toured the house told us that it couldn't be worth any more than $1,500,000. Now comes word, via a tipster, that the house, which was originally built by a former mayor of Brooklyn, has gone into contract at an all-cash price "significantly less than ask." If you know the price and care to drop us a line, please know that your anonymity will be protected!
Update: We just heard from someone familiar with the deal and, while we didn't get a contract price, we did learn that it is being purchased by a preservation-minded couple that plans to restore it and keep as many details as possible; they will live in the house and create one rental apartment. Great news!
Update II: Another tipster tells us that they buyer is a couple from Manhattan and that the purchase price was somewhere in the $1.7 to $1.8 million range.
405 Clinton Avenue [Brooklyn Properties] GMAP P*Shark
Clinton Avenue Haunted Mansion Now 25% Cheaper [Brownstoner]
House of the Day: 405 Clinton Avenue [Brownstoner]
Serious Dumpster Action on Clinton Avenue [Brownstoner]

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