Is It a Buyer's or Seller's Market in Townhouses?
Here’s an email we received from a reader this week: I was hoping you could foment some sort of discussion on the summer brooklyn townhouse market. I can’t really figure out what’s going on. It seems like a lot of stuff is left over from the spring, but then some great stuff just flies off…
Here’s an email we received from a reader this week:
I was hoping you could foment some sort of discussion on the summer brooklyn townhouse market. I can’t really figure out what’s going on. It seems like a lot of stuff is left over from the spring, but then some great stuff just flies off the shelf. I’ve been to dozens of open houses the past few weeks, some are empty, some are thronged. I can’t tell if it’s a buyer’s market or a seller’s market. It seems like a lot of people are waiting for the fall to see what comes on the market. What’s your sense?
Seems to us like there’s not a lot of good inventory and that buyers aren’t desperate enough to go for the crap. Your thoughts?
Photo by Da Nator
Actually that is dead wrong.
The qualified pool of brownstone buyers has increased not decreased.
Subprime buyers are not buying 3 million dollar brownstones.
Wall Street bonuses are setting records, and will be up again next year.
can someone please explain to me what your idea of diverse is, because i don’t understand why people say brownstoner brooklyn isn’t diverse. i believe it is. very much so, in fact.
to me, diverse means something that resembles (or closely resembles) our population as a whole. that is roughly 70% white, 10% black, 15% hispanic, 5% asian, some gays, etc.
bed stuy is NOT diverse. scarsdale is NOT diverse. jersey city is NOT diverse.
you all seem to think diverse means finding a neighborhood that has as many non-hite faces as possible,and i just don’t agree that that’s what diverse means.
this isn’t a race thing, i just don’t get it.
Market is in a slow-motion transition from seller (increasing in number) to buyer (qualified pool decreasing). Well located move-in brownstones are high-end so they’ll be the last to be affected. Their day will come though (any year now). Don’t be fooled.
“The next time you ask, ‘Where’s the brownstone market going?’, ask yourself, ‘Where’s the stock market/economy going?’. – Mos Def (Black on Both Sides, 1999)
My comment at 11:20 should have begun with “Much of the character, historic charm and”
i’ve noticed that townhouses, or co-ops within bronwstones are doing superbly well.
anything decent in park slope is sold within a few weeks. my gf bought her studio in park slope for 250K in october and sold it last month (in 2 days for 345K.
not bad.
diversity that Brooklyn offers can be found in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods of downtown Jersey City, all within walking distance from the PATH (which offers a quick and predictable commute to Manhattan). See Hamilton Park, Harsimus Cove, Paulus Hook, Van Vorst Park. Many of the brownstones in these historic neighborhoods are subject to particularly low property taxes in comparison to the burbs of greater New Jersey (i.e., usually under 5k/yr).
10:57 some people consider that too far out. If I was going to look in Sunset Park I’d also consider closer parts of Queens.
10:44, so are you prime, alt-a, or just messing with us?
Makes me think of a few other questions for those bullish on this house market.
Forget subprime, I say. Everybody now realizes that’s a quagmire. But Alt-A is another 20% of the market and is a synonym for qualified-but-can’t-afford-it. They’re going down, too, but how many realize it? How many of those no-doc loans were magically turned into AAA paper? When more funds fail and more CDOs are downgraded drastically, where does the next flood of easy money come from?
10:44am I am sorry to hear that you are going into foreclosure. But what happened? Did you get an ARM that is now readjusting or did you have some financial set back? I think it is interesting to add a human prespective to the forelosure numbers we see everyday.