A Successful Buy-and-Hold Strategy on Hoyt Street
What is it about stories about people who scored beautiful houses in Brownstone Brooklyn three decades ago that are at once so irresistible and envy-inducing? Whatever it is, The Times served up another dose this weekend in its Habitats column. In this case, the lucky owners are a charming couple that met at Pratt in…
What is it about stories about people who scored beautiful houses in Brownstone Brooklyn three decades ago that are at once so irresistible and envy-inducing? Whatever it is, The Times served up another dose this weekend in its Habitats column. In this case, the lucky owners are a charming couple that met at Pratt in the late 1960s before nabbing their 22-foot-wide brownstone on Hoyt Street in Boerum Hill in 1973 for a cool $49,500. Of course, there’s the requisite context of urban grittiness to smudge our rose-colored glasses. Wyckoff Street was an open drug bazaar, with guns and hookers everywhere, said Frank Cusack, one half of the pioneering real estate couple. Decades of block association work and one celebrity couple neighbor later, of course, Hoyt Street is a whole different animal, though Ms. Cusack still conducts her exercise classes for neighborhood ladies in the parlor floor living room. The couple just finished a renovation (a conversion of the garden floor to a rental), the last of many in the 36-year span they’ve occupied the house.
Shrink or Expand to Fit [NY Times]
Brooklyn Chicken–I could have written the same post almost word for word. We are currently living on two floors and I am working on a third and renting the fourth. But eventually we will probably put my father in law in the garden flat for a little while and then god knows who else in later years (kids home from college etc). Thanks for your post as it very much encapsulates my thoughts as well.
I just saw Liz Holtzman and Dean Street was close but no cigar. She’s always there on her stoop laughing n’ a cracking jokes.
I once spent several hours in the waiting room of Holy Family ER. It was a waiting room of moaning seniors that didn’t have anywhere else to go to hang out.
The receptopnist had this system of issuing numbered popsicle (used)sticks. Then every half hour she would call number with out any apparent oreder.
‘never got to see a Doctor so I guess that I survived.
Here’s another one what was the name of the take out Chinese on the site of Bar Tabac ? That was the only chinese close by (nobody would deliver then) but it was filthy, but cheap.
In 2005, I bought a “nice Federal brick in a really nice area of Philly” (Queen Village) for 400K, so if what Dave in Bed Stuy says is true, I’ve done all right.
I also bought an 1840s brick row house in an up-and-coming (not shitty) area of Philly in 2007 for 135K, so if what Santa says is true, even better.
more than a few, Santa. 🙂
The “shrink or expand” concept is what makes these four-story houses so fun in the long-haul. You can rent the garden apartment for money, put your teenage or college-age kid or aging parent in it, use it for a home office, or live large and expand into it. My two-kid family fits fine in two floors and would fit luxuriously into three floors. We currently have a live/work arrangment, with Mr. Chicken working on the top floor. We bought this house for the long-haul, and watching the price rise by several factors has been amusing. Watching it fall is less amusing, but no less insignificant, since, like the Cusacks, we are here to stay.
dave, in 1973 who would have wanted to live in a shitty area of brooklyn for 49k? Im sure you could have bought in a much nicer area of Brooklyn or Manhattan for the equivalent 500k.
you could also buy a huge house and a few people in Vietnam for whatever you paid for your bed stuy house.
Thank you BHO, but what I meant was that your 12:38 post literally made no sense. I appreciate your translation, although I doubt that I, or the Cusacks, will “feel it.” [I, for one, could easily live with my enormous Monopoly money appreciation being halved, or quartered, if it came to that].
Yes, but who wants to live in a shitty area in Baltimore or Philadelphia. You can buy a nice Federal brick in a really nice area of Philly for $500-600,000
hey oldtimer…was it liz holtzman?… She lived on Dean. Not sure if she still does.