30 Orange Street Sells for $2,775,000
When we posted about 30 Orange Street back in April, the four story brick house had just had its asking price cut from $3,100,000 to $2,900,000. (As a commenter points out below, it began life at $3,250,000 in February.) Despite the fact that the house needed a full renovation, the consensus opinion seemed to be…
When we posted about 30 Orange Street back in April, the four story brick house had just had its asking price cut from $3,100,000 to $2,900,000. (As a commenter points out below, it began life at $3,250,000 in February.) Despite the fact that the house needed a full renovation, the consensus opinion seemed to be that the market-clearing price could not be much less. Sure enough, the property went into contract at the end of June for $2,775,000 and just closed on July 30.
HOTD: 30 Orange Street [Brownstoner] GMAP P*Shark
Well, you are buying an old house, do expect it to be all in brand new condition? The thing about this house is that the day after the closing I would move in, put down my persian carpets, and after the movers leave, have a sip of sherry (I think sherry is right for Brooklyn Heights) then I could start dealing with the kitchen etc, while living there. It would take a year, sure, but that’s life in a brownstone.
That is very differnet from a former SRO or a horribly mangled house that you would not think of moving into until it was irradiated and at least partially renovated. This place is a peach, so the bath is a little dated or whatever.
geesh, it’s Brooklyn Heights!
For clarification’s sake: I didn’t say one needed to “gut the house”, I said we felt the kitchen would need to be gutted. Very old, in very bad condition, on the garden floor. The rest would need to be refurbished, though we would have chosen to gut and reconfigure the bathrooms as well.
The pictures made the place look much nicer than it appeared in person – oriental carpets can do wonders for a home’s appearance.
Listen, just our 02.
Sam,
We are not particularly “handy”, hence would have hired a contractor (& his crew) to do this work for us had we decided to buy this house. All new electrical, plumbing, a gut job on the kitchen and 3 bathrooms, plus work on the garden would have been needed for this property.
If you know a contractor who would do this job (nicely, while not “silly” high end) for the 120K you suggest in your 12:50 comment, by all means and for the love of god, please share!
I agree that $600,000 would be an astronomical amount to pay for renovating this house. I’d love to be your contractor/architect if that’s what you’re planning to do. Not sure why you’d “gut” the house just to update systems, kitchens and bathrooms. I’d save that kind of work only for a house that had been carved up/altered.
Also, some people say the price is low for the neighborhood, others say too high given the size/condition – does anyone actually have a basis to back up either of these assertions? In absolute dollars it seems lower than what I’ve seen reported.
I think given the broad scope that brownstoner covers on a daily basis and given that none of us pay a dime to enjoy it, he does a pretty damn good job. I’m not trying to kiss anyone’s ass, and of course there are things that I might not find “perfect” for me, but as someone mentioned, this website is not CNN.
For the record, I was not implying that Brownstoner was actually in cohoots with a particular agent, rather that he has sold his soul and warped the essence of the site. And reduced its usefulness as well.
As for tracking, other RE sites that I frequent do a monthly listing of all featured properties that have sold that month. It isn’t that hard.
Putting in new electrical and renovating the kitchen and baths does not sound to me like a “complete renovation”
A high-end, but not silly, kitchen reno is $80,000. Baths can be done for maybe 20,000 each. electrical another 20,000. The exterior is in good shape the finishes look to be in good shape. This is a terrific mid-size house. I think the price is really low for the Heights.
I agree that the site could use some improvement for tracking sales. I don’t know how effective Stoner’s tagging is, but, ideally, every property on the site should be tagged by, say, its address, so that users could quickly filter by property and see its history on Brownstoner. If Stoner had sales data for every property posted on the site, it would be a lot more powerful.
I say this often on this blog, but I don’t pay much attention to the sale price vs. ask price, since ask prices are so easilu maniupulated (i.e. can by very high to get a listing or very low to get a bidding war going). Better to benchmark to comps + psf. $2.8 mm for a small house that is described as needing work seems like a good price for the seller.