Mother Lode Brooklyn: From $16K to $1.9M on State St
The Times brings the story of Mildred Furiya, who at age 89 is looking to sell her brownstone at 299 State Street after living there for half a century. When she moved in, according to the article, there was a house of ill repute across the street, and over the decades she and her husband…
The Times brings the story of Mildred Furiya, who at age 89 is looking to sell her brownstone at 299 State Street after living there for half a century. When she moved in, according to the article, there was a house of ill repute across the street, and over the decades she and her husband put a lot of sweat equity into renovating the place. Here’s the tale of a long-term real estate investment that’s probably going to pay off handsomely: “It is the gentrifier’s Holy Grail: a fixer-upper in a marginal area with potential. After the renovations, the lobbying for community improvements with like-minded neighbors, the holding on through the ups and downs, the scrappy, savvy buyer trades it in for a bigger, better place — or cashes out and retires in luxury. ..[Furiya] bought the house for $16,000 in 1966 with a cash gift from her father, the economist Alvin H. Hansen, and her brokers, Ross Brown and Florence Ng of Citi Habitats, plan to list the house at about $1.895 million. A sale at that price would represent an 11,744 percent increase over 45 years — or an annual return of about 11 percent.”
Holding On Has Its Benefits, and Then Some [NY Times]
The real lesson here is that a home is not an investment. Here is a women who bought a run down house in a marginal to lousy neighborhood at a point that the viability of the entire city was legitimately in question and is now selling 45 years later; After the entire city has been rejuvenated, her specific neighborhood has gone from marginal to high end and virtually everything positive on a RE front has happened. And what is the return, at best 11% – (and they aren’t figuring in maintenance costs including taxes or the brokerage commission on the sale and they are assuming that she gets her ask – which is unlikely based on the photos I can see)
Virtually no one can expect to have similar results as this women and even so her returns, while great, certainly dont offset the “investment” risk, when you realize the millions of other buyers who actually LOSE $ when they buy there home.
Buy a home because you want to live there, not because you think its going to make you rich.
totally agree, fsrg
Only 36 years? You’re just a young ‘un 🙂