To Buy or Not to Buy
We rent a two-bedroom in Park Slope for over $3,000/month. We have $120K sitting in the bank ready for a down payment and could easily make a payment of up to $4,500/month. We could afford to buy an apartment, but we are in no rush as we live comfortably now. When we do buy, we…
We rent a two-bedroom in Park Slope for over $3,000/month. We have $120K sitting in the bank ready for a down payment and could easily make a payment of up to $4,500/month. We could afford to buy an apartment, but we are in no rush as we live comfortably now. When we do buy, we are looking for a 2 bedroom w/ outdoor space. What are your thoughts about the market – should we hold off and sit tight until the market falls further, or should we jump in now? Is there a general sense it still has up to 30% to fall?
Miss Muffett – how do you know that an offer of $1.35 mil was entertained? From the broker? Just curious, because I looked at that house (and as I mentioned in the comments when it was HOTD, I thought the poor layout was one of the primary reasons it wasn’t moving).
And mopar’s idea that only rich people live in PS is another myth. Sure, some wealthy people bought at the peak for the $3million price tags that sprung up, but PS is a big neighborhood and it is just a total fallacy that these wealthy few represent everybody. Spend some serious time in Park Slope, hang out with families who go to the public schools, and you will see what I mean. There are lots of average people trying to get a decent education for their kids, and they are not going to prop up the ridiculous prices of recent years.
Mopar – sorry but the Park Slope brownstone on 1st Street I referred to is not moving for 1.35 (it’s been featured on this blog twice recently), so why is my estimate of 1-1.5 so unrealistic? My comments are based on close observation of and experience with the market, not fantasy.
BHO is sounding so reasonable today. Wasder, you’re sure he and The What are one and the same?
Miss Muffet, Brooklyn prices have nothing to do with the rest of the country. Rich people live here. Or haven’t you heard? “Nice” brownstones in Park Slope are not going to fall to a million. That is a fantasy of yours because that is what you can afford.
Tyburg, the “city” does not consist only of Park Slope. That’s like complaining you can’t afford Beverly Hills so you’ll have to move out of LA. Buy a house in Queens, the Bronx, Bushwick, East New York — geez.
“If you are dead set for prime PS — no chance”. This is patently false. There are plenty of examples of price cuts happening in prime Park Slope, such as the house on 1st Street bet 5/6 that started last fall at 1.750 (seemed reasonable at the time), then cut to 1.6 and now 1.5 and last I heard the owner was entertaining an offer of 1.35 but evidently that fell through. And there a number of 3 BRs on 3rd Street in PS that have had significant price chops (1 is now $899, the other $925 which started well over the $1Mil mark). And of course several big houses by the park have been having price cuts in the hundreds of thousands of dollars of late, but are still very expensive.
I’m not saying PS, or other prime areas, will suddenly have bargain basement prices, but in most parts of the country, and indeed in Brooklyn $1.5 mil is a lot of money for a single family house, so the $2-3Mil+ price tags of the last couple of years were clearly part of the bubble, and for prices on a nice PS brownstone to head close to a million-$1.5 (about where they were a few short years ago) is not implausible at all, nor apartments to fall in price respectively as well. As a slew of reports have confirmed recently, even prime Manhattan areas are seeing huge price cuts, or strong signs that they are about to happen – so why would prime Brooklyn be immune?
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…BuyingAtBottomIsPeace
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