Open Thread

Dave, when you bought were the bathrooms ‘unlivable’ or simply not to your taste and therefore you renovated them?

Brownstoners:

Just to clarify: University Terrace adjoins Pratt Institute. University Towers is near Flatbush Avenue and the old Brooklyn campus of Long Island University.

The Terrace, the Towers, Willoughby Walk, Morningside Gardens, etc. were typical Moses ventures developed in alliance with big schools and institutions that wanted to create middle-class enclaves around their campuses — bulwarks against the city’s spreading blight during the 1950s and 1960s.

I don’t know if University Terrace hastened Robert Moses’ downfall. The biggest of his housing scandals, according to Robert Caro’s book, was Park West Village on the Upper West Side, where thousands of people were displaced for a project built by his cronies, creating overcrowded conditions elsewhere in the neighborhood where the project’s site residents moved.

Over the weekend, I Googled the Quadrangles and found Mies’ original plan. Although University Terrace is brick and not glass (which would be more typical of Mies), its floorplans are pretty much cribbed from his diagrams, the apartment I recall in the original drawings, right down the corner living room (but without the terrace).

NOP

Makes sense, chicken. Thanks.

It depends on the market at the time. While prices were rising rapidly, it made more sense to leave the kitchen undone or just have a basic one because you could just take a slight discount as say “pick your own”.

In this environment though I think a seller should go as far as possible to make sure that as much as possible is done. The things that buyers care most about (that are within your control) are kitchens and bathrooms.

If you are buying today, do you want to lay down a big chunk for the deposit and then another big chunk to do up the kitchen and bathrooms? Better to have it already done and factored into the price.