Destroying a Piece of Cypress Hills History
A reader sent us the top photo of an old free-standing wood house in Cypress Hills scheduled for a dance with the wrecking ball courtesy of a developer who’s planning on slapping up seven two-family Fedders specials on that one lot. Quel bummer! The single-family house, located on a 95-by-112-foot lot (shown in the smaller…
A reader sent us the top photo of an old free-standing wood house in Cypress Hills scheduled for a dance with the wrecking ball courtesy of a developer who’s planning on slapping up seven two-family Fedders specials on that one lot. Quel bummer! The single-family house, located on a 95-by-112-foot lot (shown in the smaller pics courtesy of PropertyShark) at 148 Arlington Avenue, sold recently to a developer for $990,000. Any guesses as to what the current owner paid in 1997? $36,000, according to our tipster! A nice 27-bagger in seven years. Not too shabby. Anyway, our tipster also included some photos of other houses in the neighborhood which we’ll assume a healthy portion of our audience is as unfamiliar with as we are. We’re going to try to make it out there one of these next weekends. Can anyone fill us in on the recent history of the area? GMAP P*Shark
Quite frankly who cares who posts under what name – especially when it is innocuous and informative. This whole “troll” thing makes it sound like you are all tweakers after a long weekend on crystal meth. I don’t know who any of you are (there was that person iceberg who had rather over the top libertarian views). But then I am new to this blog thing – are there points being awarded for number of posts?
More on point – I am constantly amazed by how big this city is, and how many opportunities there would be to create a home for yourself (as opposed to an investment opportunity) if you were willing to move to an “unknown” neighborhood. Of course lately I have been thinking more and more about how nice it would be to live in one of the smaller industrial cities in NY or New England. No hope of economic return, but a nice home in a community you might actually have input in.
Everyone, please note that I did note post at 11:29AM. That is Mr. Troll.
Whoops, forgot to erase my last sentence!
I agree it’s a beautiful area. Now if they could only get rid of the roaming packs of pit bulls…
Cypress hills is only a twenty minute train ride to williamsburg marcy stop also you can take the j to the L train at broadway junction-Developers are salivating for land in cypress hills.Its a very nice neighborhood with a 122 acre park(Highland Park) for the amenities.There are alot of beutiful brick houses dating back to 1910. Housing prices in this area are going up fast.Don’t be surprise when the corcoran group starts to sell houses in this area.
…and the name of the hip-hop group refers to a place in an L.A. suburb, not this neighborhood.
Is that house on the ridge? There is a ridge that runs along by Highland Park with a lot of big beautiful old houses with a spectacular view down to Jamaica Bay and the ocean. There are also several other big old homes, some of them rather decayed, built on large lots throughout the area. It was apparently a sort of resort/suburb in the 19th Century built on the railroad out to Jamaica. Even though the neighborhood is uncomfortably close to East New York and way way out from Manhattan on the J train, I’ve often wondered how long it would take developers, speculators, et. al. to find that high spot and make use of it.
Incidentally, it’s also the home of NYC’s only national military cemetary. A well-kept civil war burial ground, which is what first got me out there.
re: picture smoothing, we can’t get any new software on our machine at work without risking detection…all exe files are blocked 🙁
Not to be a math nudge, but since folks here focus so much on the “investment aspect” of housing, the correct return analysis would be 133.5 times the invested equity, assuming a 20% down payment at time of purchase, no capex during the time of ownership, as well as no net or operating income over the 7 year period. All in all, not too shabby, as originally described!