QOTD

Benson, I do think it is a reason to kick the tires harder. Some developments sailed through to completion during this rough patch, others did not. Some develoeprs are on sound financial footing, and some leverage to the hilt and keep leveraging to squeeze through. I don’t think it is wrong to suspect that some of the longer-stalled project stalled because lenders balked, and if those developers did not have the resources to carry on, chances are they have been tight from the beginning, or at least once construction resumed, and have cut corners along the way. I also wouldn’t assume all of the most heavily squeezed developers whose projects stalled left tehm in states where only the most impervious structural components were left open to the elements. I’ve seen in both new construction and in a number of renovations, including my own, the kinds of corners that can get cut when money runs short. If a project was stalled for 9-15 months, you can be sure no one was coming out to check the tarps every day, and you can’t be sure that there was nothing installed that is susceptible to water or wind damage. Not everyone builds the right way or stopped at a convenient pahse. Mine is not a “don’t buy” recommendation, just a be wary and vigilant recomendation, but I think with good reason.

— by slopefarm in A Thawing of the Development Freeze?

Which is more pathetic and yawn inducing:

a) New York Magazine “lifestyle” story;
b) New York Times “lifestyle” story;
c) New York Observer “lifestyle” story.

Decisions, decisions.

— by benson in A Borough of BroBos?

Dear Readers of the Brownstoner, I have never read any of your blogs before I saw this article. However, I have been exposed to your opinions and ideas since the day I was born. Most of those ideas have been around long before all of you were born and have lead to the establishment of, among many other things, Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany and ultimately the eradication of more than half the Jewish race. I bring these examples to show the power of your ideas and their ultimate manifestation.

These ideas have also been described… (more…)

I’m sorry, but a house like this is not 100 shares of some under performing stock. It’s an historic piece of Brooklyn, built for the daughter of one of Bklyn’s big shots, and a fine example of eclectic turn of the century architecture. There are no other houses like this in CHN. The interior is full of first quality period detailing, and the entire property could be someone’s dream home, a wonderful place to raise a family, or grow old sitting on the porch. I really hate it when a place like this is reduced to a calculation of percentages, and formulas for tossing it around like a bean bag. The amount of time, money, research and heartache the guys who lost it put in shows that a house is more than just the price, or the comps. It’s also an emotional, physical reaction to a potential home. That is so often totally forgotten here.

— by Montrose Morris in 1094 Park Place Finally Sells

The final dots that need to be connected are left unconnected by Ourossoff. Bait-and-switchers don’t just bait-and-switch once, it is a pattern. And if Ratner’s Gehry bait-and-switch is stunning, so is the bait-and-switch on “affordable” housing, “publicly accessible open space,” job creation, commercial space, reneging on a contract with the MTA, and changing the project timeline from 10 years to, unofficially “decades” and officially 6 years to build just the arena according to state financing documents. Atlantic Yards itself is a monument to bait-and-switch.

— by DDDB in Ratner Cans Gehry For Good

As has been pointed out, there is little reason to focus on a boundary unless your focus is on being in PS 29 (which has explicit boundaries), wanting to live in/avoid a LPC district (also explicit boundaries) or else being able to walk relatively more quickly to the Borough Hall subways (in which case you want to be in Cobble Hill). I was told by someone who grew up on Kane in the 1970′s (and then later in Brooklyn Heights) that the mental boundary for him (an ethnic wasp) was Union — once you crossed Union, the neighborhood went from something like 40-50% Italian to 80-100% Italian. (I wouldn’t count on those numbers to be accurate, but more that it was his perception.) That kind of jibes with the current zoning for PS 29, which goes to at least the north side of Union as far east as Court (but excludes everything north of Congress). (also, as 99 luftballons pointed out, there are 4 or 5 blocks east of Court also in PS 29). I don’t know whether the zone was the same when my friend was growing up.

— by Boerumresident in Cobble Hill or Carroll Gardens?

This is why developers build eyesore POS’s all over the place – because whoever objects is termed elitist and these concerns are dismissed. Demanding higher standards from developers altering our neighbor- hoods with the shittiest, cheapest condo buildings they can build is not snobbery. And I’m not suggesting city regulation – if more people spoke up then developers would maybe, maybe, give aesthetics 10 extra minutes of thought.

— by squaredrive in Horror Show Friday: 170 Clermont Avenue

Ok here is one part of this that was ignored. The police usually don’t respond or do anything about drug dealing unless someone has a gun. They have to actually catch someone in the act of dealing to really arrest them. They are business people and have figured out how to do their business. They get sloppy now and then, but they are fully aware of how to play the law. If you call 911 about drug dealing, they will ask you if anyone has a gun. The gun part will seal the deal for them and they will make a move. Here is my theory. Everyone’s gotta eat. There are people that have jobs and get paid and people that hustle and get paid. The cops know this. The city knows this. My experience in Brooklyn shows me that in any given neighborhood the MAJORITY rules. If the majority is Hasidic Jews, they dictate the behaviors and rules, In white neighborhoods, people sip wine on their stoops. In the Lower East Side the cops have been told not to respond to noise complaints because Bloomberg has declared it a “party zone” and it would be bad for business to tell the bars to keep the noise down. In poor and working class black neighborhoods there is a percentage of people that have to hustle to make a living. As long as that hustling is not hurting anyone, causing other crimes or drawing large numbers of complaints, then its business as usual. It keeps things status quo, people eat and no one gets hurt. Clampdown and well, what will folks do? Especially with high unemployment levels. The cops know its happening, but unless its really causing a problem to surrounding businesses and threatening people’s lives they do nothing really. They can’t, its majority rule basically. So until the majority swings the other way and people keep complaining, the 77th probably can’t do much.

— by tomgee in Drug Dealing Hotspot in Crown Heights?

The Cusacks were here a few years before me, so a tip of the hat to them. But I rememeber the protestors against The House Tours because of their gentrification and aim to bring in middle class white folk. It made me feel like I was a settler in the West bank. I was so impressed with the cost of these houses in the seventies also how nice the neighbourhood felt, except at night. There were gang wars on Wyckoff Street, every corner had a bodega with domino players outside, the corner streets were embedded with Micheloeb caps that clacked when you walked on and attracted lighting. There were sawd off bodies found in back yards, wild dogs ran free in the early morn and there was fighting on the streets from little lads to seniors. Those were the days. There were no bars or restaurants for yuppies like us, there were a couple of places on Atlantic or else it was a hike to Montague or Juniors. If I found myself on Smith Street at night I would walk down the center of the street, there were few cars. It was damm scarey with tough guy social clubs, ‘ethnic’ bars and Reagge’record stores’with bullet proof glass.It was easier to buy dope than a Big Youth LP.

— by oldtimer in A Successful Buy-and-Hold Strategy on Hoyt Street

You have the effects of the MAB [Mutant Asset Bubble] implosion wrong. The MAB has hurt poor people greatly. If you go to subprime areas, you see that it is poor, working class people who were swindled by subprime brokers and are now losing their credit scores, their houses, and in many cases down payments and closing costs. This is very serious. In addition, all the empty, boarded up houses just encourage crime and destroy the property values of their neighbors’ houses. In sum, poor people were screwed on the way up and they’re being screwed on the way down. The rich are not going to suffer as much.

— by mopar in Last Week’s Biggest Sales

We have to stop fetishing home ownership. If you can’t afford your home/your mortgage — a liability – you need to sell. I don’t care why. Job loss, medical, dumb moves. It doesn’t matter. If you can’t afford it today, you won’t be able to afford it next year either. This economy isn’t going to turn around that quickly. Sell. Pay off your credit cards. Move on. The question, “How can we help them keep their home?” is not the right question. How can we get them back on their feet? That’s the real question and the answer is to sell their home. Sellers need buyers and that’s why we need a mortgage plan for credit-worthy people. The best possible solution would be to get back to the olden days when people might own a home and own one rental property as a nest egg. And other people rent until they can afford a home. Really afford a home.

— by Ringo in Housing Rescue Plan: For Some or For All?

Personally, I think if you’ve milked the building dry, deferred maintainance to the point of no return, and reached the point where it’s uninhabitable and dangerous, you should be forced to sell to the city or an appropriate non-profit, and the building should be immediately sold or developed into affordable housing. I know that’s how the city ended up becoming the largest landlord forty years ago, but that’s because they decided to hold onto and manage the properties. A better solution would be to sell or cede to a non-profit, a religious entity, a tenant association, or a private owner. The sooner a building like this is renovated, and full of rent paying tenants, or owners, the better for the city’s tax coffers and for the neighborhood.

— by Montrose Morris in 566 Hancock Street’s Seen Better Days

Once we join the rest of the country in terms of accepting reality – we are by the way now falling under the same lending standards of income to debt ratios, and under the new appraisal requirements set forth in the lending crack-downs – we should see prices return to levels where they still should be had the past 10 years of bizzaro world not happened. In 1-2 years (or less) wait and see if we don’t follow the rest of the country. I’m looking again at condos around Miami and they are around $100/psf – even less for anything that isn’t new construction. These same exact condos were in the $700-800 psf range just 2 years ago – I still have my old offering and information paperwork from when I was looking at the same units back then. One of the units that was asking $700,000, is now right at $100K with the seller kicking in closing costs. And we are talking prime neighborhoods. So sit back and watch. It’s not going to be pretty for sellers who overpaid, but will be great for families in our city who can move back in and not have to live 2 adults and 4 kids in a studio that they still can’t afford.

— by williamsburgguy in Toll Gets Serious About Selling at Northside Piers

When the government restricts return on any particular asset, that asset will be allowed to deteriorate until its value is low enough that it earns an acceptable return. If there is no value low enough, the asset will, one way or another, end up in the government’s hands and become a burden on taxpayers. Whoever used the old saw “market failure” earlier in this discussion has successfully memorized a popular socialist catch phrase but does not appreciate the law of unintended consequences. If you force landlords to rent units at below market rents, the affected housing stock will slowly deteriorate. The remaining housing stock becomes prohibitively expensive, and new renters find it difficult or impossible to get into the below market units. The below market units effectively become a one-time property transfer from landlords (who actually took risk in buying and spend money for upkeep and repairs) to whoever had the dumb luck to be in a controlled apartment when the rules took effect. The controlled housing stock is tightly clutched in the hands of a less and less deserving population until it has to be pried from their dead hands, while over time the people who actually need affordable housing stock find it impossible to find because everything that isn’t being held until death is overpriced.

— by lechacal in Democratic Assembly Passes Pro-Tenant Legislation

As both a resident and landlord in Bushwick, I would like to add a few thoughts. Yes, the neighborhood is mostly latino, south and central American. I find these folks are hard working, friendly and make excellent tenants. The new hipsters (young, white, skinny jeans) generally keep to themselves and generally live in Bushwick for the same reason as the Latinos – its cheap, has good services, and is reasonably close to Manhattan (especially if you are near the L). Certainly things are changing – buildings are being renovated and a few new bars and restaurants have come in but by and large, I find that the two groups tend to co-exist fairly peacefully and I don’t see rapid gentrification driving folks out of the area. One last note: Bushwick is a big neighborhood – on the west end it is mostly industrial and has a number of loft buildings inhabited by artists. Along Broadway, under the train, the area has much more in common with Bed-Stuy. Along the L train, it is mostly Latin, solidly working class with a sprinkling of young folks looking for cheap rent and in the East, near Broadway Junction, it is pretty rough with more in common with East NY. This area also has great brick rowhouses that can be had for less than $500K. Bushwick is a real Brooklyn neighborhood with thriving retail and solid residential blocks. I encourage Brownstoner readers to come and explore my neighborhood.

— by JoeBushwick in Bushwick Goes National

Here’s a tip from Sam: If you are a single guy or gal seeking to become more attractive in the eyes of other singles, then by this house. Nothing says “sex appeal” like your own house. Especially an incredibly cool litle house like this one. It’s less than a one-bedroom at the Meier tower.

— by sam in House of the Day: 177 St. James Place

The problem is the government doing something about foreclosures means the government using your and my taxes to pay for bad debts taken during the housing bubble. I don’t have a problem with my taxes being used to help out people of good will who have found themselves in a temporary tough spot with paying the mortgage on their primary (and only!) residence and need some help to get through it. But the people who took out the liar loans, people with 2 or more properties, and the house flippers who got caught should all be foreclosed on if they can’t pay their bills imho. And the government should not be trying to prop up real estate prices any more than it props up my 401k.

— by northsloperenter in Blinder: ‘Fiddling on Foreclosures’

Houses are not fungible and there are unique reasons for each deal closing. Even as the market goes down, there will be deals done that appear to buck the trend – just like a stock chart where the price dances up and down around a trend. Calling the housing market bottom because one house sold for a good price is akin to calling the S&P bottom because one company beat numbers and its share price jumped – you have to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

— by the chicken in Open House Picks: Six Months Later

We are just at the VERY beginning of the scaling back process. With the country losing jobs like crazy right now, people who want to scale back might not even be able to because they are just trying to cling to what they have right now. Think about all those MILLIONS of people who moved to the Sun Belt over the last decade and bought those energy sucking houses in the deserts of Phoenix, Las Vegas, etc. Many of them are trapped. Their houses are worth half, their electricity costs are through the roof and they now find themselves in cities which were born of the notion that bigger is better. We don’t hear about the shift as much yet, because those people aren’t yet packing up in any serious numbers (my few friends aside) because they are just trying to figure out what comes next. I guarantee you though, that a lot of people feel trapped right now in a lifestyle which they now realize is not sustainable for the long run. It won’t be until the economy turns around that many of these same people will be able to do anything about it though. This is not a blip, I don’t think. This is an earth shattering tectonic plate shift that will reshape the way people view their lives all over the world. I think so anyway. I also think that it’s necessary, and will ultimately be a great thing for the human race.

— by 11217 in Brooklyn Rental Market More Stable Than Manhattan