Location or Condition
I’m curious. For those looking for a new house or apartment, generally would you say location or condition is the more important? My feeling is location is the more important because you can always improve/renovate a house that needs work but you can rarely lift a perfect house off its foundation and move it. Of…
I’m curious. For those looking for a new house or apartment, generally would you say location or condition is the more important?
My feeling is location is the more important because you can always improve/renovate a house that needs work but you can rarely lift a perfect house off its foundation and move it. Of course, this has been done in NYC over the years, much more in the 1700s and 1800’s and much less in the 1900’s and them mostly to bring small colonial houses to different locations for historical museum purposes. And then there was the 42st Street building they slid down the block to make way for the new New York Times Building…that was amazing, wasn’t it?!
I also feel that in a city where you do a lot of walking, amenities near your home within walking distance are very important. And, is location the main determining factor for young parents looking to get their kids into a particular public school?
One last thing, do people think curb appeal in Brownstone Brooklyn is a very important selling point? It can make or break a sale in the suburbs but here? I’m not sure. I’ve seen some real wrecks (on the outside) that friends have done wonders with.
Thank you Everyone for a lively discussion!
Slopegirl, you make some good points. I have to clarify that I’m on both sides of the equation. We are thinking of selling in a good location and wondering to what extent we really need to knock ourselves out doing any real work on the house. I can’t really get an idea to what extent spending money will be recouped or be a loss if we’re soon selling. But, heck, it might be the difference between selling now as opposed to sitting around for year getting nervous.
And, yes, we do have a little concern over “what next?”…do we buy where the location is excellent and settle for something less than perfect and needs work or settle on a less than ideal location for a turn-key, easy new apartment. Some of the mod buildings have their appeal, I’ll admit. After years of sloping floors, cracking plaster, and creaking stairs, those flat floors and bright mod boxy interiors seem appealing…and, no stairs! It’s that or a knee replacement! 🙂
I think Bob gave some good advice for which I thank him. “Location” does change so even if a spot is not now considered advantageous, it might be in 5 or 10 years if more amenities come in. Cities can be fickle.
🙂
I really don’t understand this OP. No one can predict the future of the housing market. I think the jokey mantra “location, location, location” is true… except when it isn’t. Yes, “curb” appeal matters. Yes, the block matters most.
BUT you can clearly make the most money on a house if you take a chance, that is, buy in a neighborhood or on a block where no one seems to want to live. But taking a chance by definition means no one will be able to predict that it will work.
The people who bought brownstones in park slope in the 60s and 70s made money on their houses as the neighborhood changed, but I don’t think that was the goal. They saw beautiful houses at low prices near a nice park. They worked on the schools, lived their lives, and slowly, the neighborhood changed. But don’t forget NYC as a whole is MUCH different than decades gone by. Anyone remember Times Square? the Meatpacking district? Chelsea?? Yes, PS was a lot tougher then, but no it was never a ghetto. Relative to NYC as a whole, park slope has been a nice place to live for at least 40 years, probably a lot longer.
I’d say live where you want, and hope it works. I really am sick of the social disease where we all think about “re-sale” value and housing market prices. It’s a bad hangover of an era of crazy speculation. The fact that we’re all still talking and thinking about it might be a symptom that there is more value still left to lose from the housing market.
Fannie and Freddie now buy 90% of all US mortgages. Which hints that the government is propping up still-inflated housing prices. This might not be able to continue indefinitely. Maybe we will see further and steeper declines in housing prices before all is said and done.
If you really want to buck the trend, the different thinking of 2010 might not be to see housing as an investment at all…
Bob Marvin is right. Parts of PS were bad. Even in 2004 when I moved to NYC into my husband’s old coop bet 5th and 6th ave in North Park Slope, the corner deli on 5th was a front for drug dealers with an inch of dust on the few goods in the store and cock fighting in the basement. My husband and a neighbor both got mugged, separately. In 2004 5th ave was gritty and gross and not nearly as cool as it is now.
Location determines price, but both location and condition may determine your own happiness.
Brooklyngreen wrote: “Do you think the areas in brownstone Brooklyn that have seen such price increases these past couple of decades will become relatively less valuable in the next years or do you think the heart of brownstone Brooklyn has reached a plateau and will stay there?”
I’m really lousy at predicting prices, but I can’t see them becoming RELATIVELY less valuable in the foreseeable future.
When I bought my house in 1974 prices in most of brownstone Brooklyn were VERY low relative to surrounding areas (the suburbs, in particular) because they were not part of the “regular” real estate market. “Most” people wanted newer houses outside of the City. Old houses were not desirable, because they were OLD and unfashionable. City houses were not desirable because “everyone” knew the cities were dying. Houses in integrated neighborhoods were undesirable because the conventional wisdom was that integration was the brief period between the first black family moving into a neighborhood and the last white family moving out.
Those of perverse enough to believe anything contrary to these common notions were considered quite strange, at best–which just might have been true :-). AS it turned out, we benefited enormously from bucking conventional wisdom. The generation of “brownstoners” before me benefited somewhat more; those who came after me, in the ’80s and early ’90s somewhat less. For better or worse perceptions have changed now and I’m pretty confident that the days of brownstone Brooklyn being a relatively low-priced niche market will not return in my lifetime (or the lifetime of my 20-something son–not entirely a good thing–I sort of miss the days of what Everett Ortner called the “schoolteacher’s coup”, whereby two teachers could buy an old city house for very little and live “like millionaires”). Whether prices will plateau or rise has become a function of the overall real estate market and my crystal ball doesn’t work too well for that.
Argentina,
I’m sure my comment seems weird to someone as (relatively) young as you must be, but I assure you that it’s entirely true. It was before (even) my time, but the “brownstone revival” in Brooklyn is said (by no less an authority than Everett Ortner) to have begun when people who couldn’t afford Brooklyn Heights crossed Atlantic Avenue to buy in that slum (now) called Cobble Hill. When it’s house tour was started (over 50 years ago) Park Slope was a reasonably safe neighborhood at it’s core (i.e. Union St– 3rd St. and PPW–7th Avenue) but even that was a dying neighborhood with lots of rooming houses and very few families with children. Outside of that core area Park Slope was anything but safe. Even 40 years ago when I moved to the South Slope ( the park block of 13th St) the neighborhood wasn’t all that safe (although, for anyone who cares about such things, your mugger was likely to have been white). Lastly, people were flocking AWAY from NYC and people like me, who wanted to live in an old city house were considered eccentric, at best.
I was quite confident about buying my PLG house in 1974, but even my optimism was shaken by the 1975 NYC fiscal crisis (and the anti-NYC reaction in the rest of the country). The enormous increase in the desirability of brownstone Brooklyn has been welcome and gratifying, but it was hardly inevitable.
It wasn’t that long ago when all Brooklyn brownstone neighborhoods (with the possible exception of Brooklyn Heights) were considered undesirable.
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Well this is a weird and not entirely true comment. Maybe your perception of “undesirable” is that they were not gentrified. For years there have been many respectable families dwelling in many of these brownstone gems throughout Brooklyn, not just in Brooklyn Heights. I grew up in Park Slope which was always a mixed neighborhood, and very safe. The same can be said for parts of Crown Heights and Clinton Hill.Fort Greene not so much.
What remains unchanged is that folks will always flock to NYC and Brooklyn will always be a desirable place to live given its unique and historic housing stock. We currently live in Crown Heights North and the changes in our neighborhood since we moved here (shortly after 9/11) are many. At the same time it remains primarily an eclectic middle class neighborhood where houses are passed on from generation to generation. The gentrification that we see is an additional layer but it hasn’t replaced the core resident in the area. There is rapid development and new apartment buildings have gone up so definitely more folks are moving in.
Invisible,
I guess my question goes back to: what do people feel is more important when it comes to selling a house in brownstone Brooklyn: location or condition? I then threw in a couple of issues such as location choice based on public school districts for those who have little children and curb appeal.
I like your point that block appeal may be more important than just the individual house’s curb appeal. This is something that struck me since I very much react to block appeal/condition but hadn’t thought to include it above. We have friends with a very nice house but a terrible monstrosity was inserted in the middle of the block. It really depresses me when I see that and always think it’s such a shame for my friends who saw that junk being slapped into the empty lot and then have to content with selling eventually.
I always wonder if anyone would ever have the gumption to buy one of these monstrosities, that should never have gone into a brownstone block, and manage to redo the facade and windows (placement and size) enough to make the house truly blend with the streetscape.
Bob, whose opinions and advice I’ve always enjoyed on brownstoner, pointed out that the perception of “location” can also “change” as neighborhoods change…and I guess that suggests that as one neighborhood fancies up or becomes popular, that will impact adjacent, as you call them, “fringes”.
So, if we move to another place in Brooklyn, I guess I’ll think about location first (proximity to subways, buses and the LIRR, provisions, interesting shops). Then the next thing would be condition (do we have to renovate, do just cosmetic work, or sit back and relax?) and environmental issues [sunlight exposure, noise and traffic, access to parks, gardening spaces such as a yard, balcony or roof (easily accessed)]. Condition also would impact how much the total cost of the new apartment or house would wind up being.
Then, for me, though less so for my husband, the block appeal issue comes into play.
Even though we have no worry about school districts at this point, I have thought about how this would influence our own decision on location since it would impact resale value but, similarly to Bob’s idea, I kind of feel that if we hang on to a Brooklyn apartment for another 15 or 20 years, there may be a long enough time period for a not so great school district to improve.
I guess BHO would say the apartment’s eventual resale will be so far below what we paid for it in real dollars that we’re all screwed! I can’t worry too much about that for a couple of reasons. Our next place may be our last place (!) and, even if we tired of it and wanted to move, say, to a warmer climate, I have a feeling whatever price we got might more than cover setting up house elsewhere in the Lower 48.
And of course, I should mention one thing I think about is barrier-free living so I’m leaning toward apartments that do not have any stairs, either one of the small newer buildings with a ground floor apartment with a barrier-free entryway or a bigger building with an elevator and no stairs at the entrance…although…a friend in Park Slope lives in a building with one elevator which was being repaired for ages. It made getting up to her apartment very difficult–I felt terrible for her.
Thanks for listening!
🙂
what is your question?
“block appeal” is more important than curb appeal (since many people don’t drive to begin with). and that goes for subway appeal.
people who spec on the fringes are not usually people with kids in school, or where their kids can hang out with street soldiers.
so again, what is your question?