Bed-Stuy: 'Experiencing a Little Bit of a Depression'?
The New York Times took a look at Bedford-Stuyvesant this weekend as an area once considered one of the roughest in the city, but one with a rich cultural history where you can now smell gentrification in the air, mainly via the fragrance of higher-end retail. More interesting than the article’s notes on gentrification is…
The New York Times took a look at Bedford-Stuyvesant this weekend as an area once considered one of the roughest in the city, but one with a rich cultural history where you can now smell gentrification in the air, mainly via the fragrance of higher-end retail. More interesting than the article’s notes on gentrification is how it touches on current home values in Bed-Stuy: “‘We’re actually experiencing a little bit of a depression,’ said Tanya Blackwood, owner of Location Location Location, a real estate agency. ‘We’re back to where people are undervaluing houses—it’s just bananas.’ The neighborhood’s size makes it difficult to narrow down a price range for houses, but livable two-families generally start around $600,000, said Keith Mack of the Corcoran Group. A house in great shape, he said, might fetch $875,000. (Houses in the historic district still command a little more, but there are very few listed.) A perusal of Web sites like PropertyShark.com shows houses trading at or below $600,000. ‘I could’ve given you a general price point a year ago,’ said Lakeisha Edwards, a broker at Prudential Douglas Elliman. ‘But it’s now really property by property; in between those are so many short sales and foreclosures.'” Agree?
History, With Hipper Retailing in Bed-Suy [NY Times]
Photos by nvrlowdown
Dave why do you have a HELOC?
brickoven…in case I want to leverage up and do something stupid. It’s free. I don’t pay a yearly fee. It’s there if i want it for anything like a Duesenberg or some other necessity.
If I had taken that HELOC out and bought C at the bottom I’d be in the Jennifer Connolly mansion now.
“Prices needed to come down to reality so residents that have a been a positive influence turning the neighborhood around can afford to stay.”
Crooklyn, I get the sentiment, but not the finance. If you bought your home in 1975 for 20k, what does it mean ‘afford to stay?’ The current price means nothing to the original pioneers except that they can either stay or sell and move somewhere else and have enuf money to live on for the rest of their lives.
Posted by: denton at August 24, 2009 3:59 PM
It’s the kind of thing that keeps old folks in rent-controlled apartments that are way too big for their needs–older people would love to downsize and stay in the neighborhood but they can’t. And their kids, unless they want to share the brownstone with mom and dad or grandma and grandpa, can’t afford to move in.
Actually works in Finance- I’m not defending the price points, and actually neither is dave. I hope it does work out for you, but dave gets attacked for saying he’s happy with his investment and the reasons why. He doesn’t regret it- but wehnever he posts something positive like that, people attack him as only trying to keep his property values high. Montrose Morris gets attacked the same way for loving Crown Heights. I agree with you about the market but defending a neighborhood you love and the investment you made in it is not the same thing as defending unrealistic pricing.
Because Bed Stuy is so geographically large, and its housing stock ranges from Stuyvesant Ave limestones to Fedders specials, it’s hard to lump all purchases, and all foreclosures under one statistical group. From the last foreclosure map I saw here recently, a sizable amount of them have not been in the brownstone areas of BS, but on the fringes, where new construction is the norm. That, of course, does not make foreclosure any less painful for those in trouble, but it also doesn’t mean Bed Stuy is circling the bowl.
There are also a significant amount of seniors and others who have been victims of mortgage fraud and predatory lending who also rachet up the figures. That is not simply a case of buying above one’s means. All of these statistics are much more complex than simple greed or miscalculation, which is why blanket statements don’t begin to tell the story here.
right DIBS. And talking about ‘seniors on fixed incomes’ makes me scream. Social Security has been indexed to inflation for decades, in fact they got a nice 5.7% COLA this year.
dave why do you have the Heloc then?
I bet not many of you know how low the real estate taxes are in Bed Stuy!!!!!!!!
I pay $2,000 for a 2,560 sq. ft. place. ROTFLMMFAO. I paid $5,500 for my 750 sq. ft. condo in Manhattan.
brickoven….why is it that you think EVERYONE is overleveraged. I’ve actually got a pretty good idea which houses might be in trouble along Stuyvesant Ave. There are three between where I live and Fulton Park.
If you look up my property it shows that I have a $370,000 mortgage and a $280,000 HELOC. I’ve never drawn a dollar from that HELOC.