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]
“Nonsense! Typical of the idiocy of treating a home as an investment and nothing more.”
Uhhhh, “Buy and Hold” is part of the thread title. And you cannot tell me that the overwhelming majority of those who bought did so without the expectation of a return on their money. This thread is heavily market related.
***Bid half off peak comps***
“Warning: Do not try this at home if you bought within the last ten years”
Nonsense! Typical of the idiocy of treating a home as an investment and nothing more.
[cf the “To Bail or Not To Bail on Your Home?” thread].
“A Successful Buy-and-Hold Strategy on Hoyt Street”
Warning: Do not try this at home if you bought within the last ten years.
“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?”
I don’t know. You tell us. It made its way here.
***Bid half off peak comps***
people like to make themselves seem more bad ass then they really are.
On the subject of long-term home ownership; one of the selling points of the late ’60s/early ’70s brownstone revival”
movement”was that there’d never be a need to need to “upgrade” by moving. The houses were certainly large enough and the brownstone neighborhoods would continue to improve.
I think may be missing part of the point. House not bought as investment tool but as something to live in. Whether it is still worth $50k or $1.5M does not matter.
The home has the flexibility to change with their needs. And they do not plan to move.
Yet – I do find Mr Cusack feeding the Times a bit of exageration to sound more ‘pioneering’ (oh I how hate that term) and all… calling Wyckoff an open drug bazaar with guns and hookers everywhere. Certainly not what it is today but everyone wants to make sound more dangerous than what it was then.
I could tell a similar story, although my neighborhood was rather less threatening in the early ’70. A successful buy-and-hold strategy indeed!
FWIW I have a “Tree Grows in Brooklyn”print (wood cut?, linoleum cut?) by Margaret Cusack, sold at an early Boerum Hill House tour.
Took the words right out of my mouth Dave.
Ahhhhh….the joys of long-term home ownership.