Co-op of the Day: 21 South Portland Avenue
How psyched was the owner of this dripping-with-details floor-through brownstone co-op when Time Out NY named South Portland the Best Block in New York City the same week he put his place on the market! His parlor floor apartment in a 25-foot-wide brownstone has some extra juice in the form of a rear extension making…
How psyched was the owner of this dripping-with-details floor-through brownstone co-op when Time Out NY named South Portland the Best Block in New York City the same week he put his place on the market! His parlor floor apartment in a 25-foot-wide brownstone has some extra juice in the form of a rear extension making it a larger-than-normal 1,170 square feet and allowing for two bedrooms. The woodwork and mirrors are to die for. It’s unclear to us from the photo how nice the kitchen is. The asking price of $829,000 is definitely on the high side for the area but may not be completely crazy given the apartment’s pedigree. Did anyone make it to the open house on Sunday?
21 South Portland Ave FSBO [NY Times] GMAP
Stunning Parlor Floorthru in 25′ Brownstone [Brooklynian]
Go to HBS, get a job on the Street and stop whinning!
It’s tough to enter the market today with a combined income of 150k. We were able to do it on a similar income in 2000. Bought a 2-bedroom co-op on the Upper West Side for 479k. Those days are gone. You have to look farther afield, either in ungentrified Bklyn, Queens, Staten Island or the Bronx. By the way, just 3 years prior to that, the co-op we bought for 479k was bought by an investor for just over 200k.
My point? 1) The RE market is due for a correction 2) Some areas have improved to the extent that buyers at your income level will never be able to afford even in the case of a decline
“How psyched was the owner of this dripping-with-details floor-through brownstone co-op when Time Out NY named South Portland the Best Block in New York City the same week he put his place on the market!”.
The article was probably the very reason why he decided to sell it. Many times if you’re a local in an area about to be featured you get a ‘heads-up” before the article even comes out. I bet that might have been the case here.
On a different note, lemme ask this;
I make $90,000 a year and my wife makes $48,000 and between the two of us we can’t afford to pay a ridiculous $829,000 price. So who the hell is buying these craps?. I mean it’s freakin’ BROOKLYN for crying out loud.
How much do YOU guys make?. How the hell are you affording the payments AND maintenance charges, which in many cases almost equal another mortgage payment?. WHERE is the middle-class?. How do they survive?.
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON WITH THESE PRICES?.
Common charges are awfully high. I would be wary of a purchase like this. with charges like that means the building itself was probably refi’d a couple times to get money out hopefully for capital improvments, but unlikely, probably unsavvy board
For those of you who say a bad layout is easy to change, it really depends on the particular unit. It can cost a tremendous amount of money if you have to, say, get into moving water and gas lines to correct a poorly sited kitchen for example. Some layouts aren’t worth the cost to rejigg. And some just don’t provide that many options. I’ll also say this too, after 12 years and one renovation in an immaculately maintained victorian brownstone coop, as much as I love all that irreplaceable period detailing and want to weep when I hear of people willfully ripping it out of old buildings I also found it a bit of an apocryphal relief to be free of it. It can feel like a straightjacket at times.
I’m with you 3:19, I couldn’t stand to live with all that fusty ornamentation either. I do like 13′ ceilings, tho …
Be careful anon 3:19, you are asking for trouble – them words amount to blasphemy on this site!.
CC/Maint $893
Wow that’s like $100 less then my rent for a 2 bedroom apt.
I like the apartment itself the size and location but I hate the aesthetic. as much as I love brownstones and some of the original work I think its too gaudy and over the top sometimes with the woodwork and the mirrors as shown here which is why I wouldn’t dare to purchase it because it would break my heart to destroy much of it but annoy the hell out of me to let a king tut mirror stay in my place. that said, I think this is a little pricey.