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
I just bought a brownstone in Carroll Gardens for 1.15. I am sad to say that although we are financially max-ed out and probably going into forclosure some time soon – it seemed like a real bargain to us and we snapped it up the second we saw it. point being, if things are decent quality and priced reasonably, they fly (but of course, in a seller’s market things not of decent quality and not priced reasonably also fly!)
I worked in NJ for the past 15 years, and I can tell you NJ is a sea of mediocrity. There is nothing unique. All the developments looked the same no matter whether the houses are $200k or 2.5 million. The expensive house is just the $200k house in a better location and bigger. People who lives there goes from one shopping mall to another. There is NO diversity.
I’m considering building a carriage house on the back portion of my corner property. Legally it would be a condo but it would feel like a house. I think I’ll only be able to build about 1,400 s.f. The location would be within one block of the 7th Ave. Q train. How much do you think the carriage house would sell in today’s market?
Prospective buyer, check out the article in the New Yorker a few months back re: commuting and its effect on quality of life. (It’s still on their website last time I checked.) Basic thrust of the article was that most people assume they’ll be happier with a nicer house and a longer commute, when the reverse is actually true. I relate to your situation, but if either you or your spouse has a typical, Manhattan-bound job, choosing the burbs means giving up precious hours at the beginning and end of the day that you will want to spend with your kids. Just another angle to consider.
My spouse and I are in the arts (what the RE theorists now refer to as the “Bohemian-Gay Index”) so we don’t have your earning power, but we are quite happy having bought in Bed-Stuy. If Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, etc. are too rich for your blood, you might consider Midwood, Ditmas, etc. Nice houses out there with yards, and you can still catch the subway.
Prospective buyer: make very sure you educate yourself about property taxes outside NY before making an offer. In many areas, your assessment, and your taxes, will jump astronomically post-purchase in what’s known as “sales chasing.” My taxes on a brownstone in Bklyn are $2600/yr. In upstate NY, say in Hudson, an $800,000 assessment translates into about $25,000/yr in taxes. And if the property is assessed at $400,000 and you buy it for $800,000, you can bet that next year your assessment will double based on the purchase price, while the assessments of your neighbors’ similar houses may not rise in tandem with your own, thus inflicting you with a disproportionate tax burden. Caveat emptor!
I just want to chime in and say that I’m thrilled this post made it to 13 comments without someone slandering or attacking anyone else personally. That has to be some kind of record.
as a recent condo buyer, I’ve been hearing that condos will slow a little bit when many of the high-rise buildings in downtown/Ft. Greene/4th Ave. start to fill up. Townhomes are always going to be at a premium, I think, and it certainly seems like people are overreaching on price a bit (note the number of price drops on the cruddy ones while the nice ones sell at or above ask).
I’m very familiar with the subprime issue right now through my job, and it will be very interesting to see if the incredibly slowdown across the country ever arrives in Brooklyn. There are several stories out today that even prime borrowers are falling behind on payments, and I wonder whether that applies to NYC or not.
So yesterday was some of the most apocalyptic national housing market news I’ve ever seen. You actually have the head of the largest mortgage broker in America saying “this is the worst since the Depression”. How insulated/immune can new york really be from the national market?
i like some of the contradictions abt bklyn: buy in brooklyn because it is hot, yet brooklyn is no longer brooklyn because some of its originality has been stripped away. I’ve been in carroll gardens the last ten years, and while it has change like every other place in nyc, the place is still diverse and “original” (whatever that means). i cant imagine how nj can offer any of the benefits of living in nyc or bklyn.
If open houses are 50-50 now, maybe a few people are at last connecting the dots.
A critical mass of opinion on what it means when median house prices are wildly beyond the median income — and a brewing Wall St. shakeup this fall — should change things a tad.