Foreclosure Pick: 185 Vernon Avenue
As usual, most of the foreclosures in Brooklyn this week are in East New York. We did spot this one house at 185 Vernon Avenue in Bedford Stuyvesant that looked interesting. Like most foreclosures, it looks like there’s a sad story behind it. After owning the house for at least 20 years, the owner all…
As usual, most of the foreclosures in Brooklyn this week are in East New York. We did spot this one house at 185 Vernon Avenue in Bedford Stuyvesant that looked interesting. Like most foreclosures, it looks like there’s a sad story behind it. After owning the house for at least 20 years, the owner all of a sudden took out at $421,000 mortgage in 2003. And now, less than four years later, she is in default and the bank is selling off the 2,500-square-foot house. The auction is today at 3 p.m. at the Kings County Supreme Court, 360 Adams Street, Room 261.
185 Vernon Avenue Foreclosure [Property Shark] GMAP
Photo by Christopher Bride for Property Shark
michaelcampion, it depends; if it’s an investor, he or she probably wants to pay no more than 70% of the current market value.
If you’re competing with someone who is looking to make this a home, you can pretty much be prepared to bid the going market rate (or even 10-20% higher). Makes no sense but, people lose track of reality and get caught up in the bidding frenzy at these auctions (psychology, irrational exuberance).
You need to do your market research and due diligence (regarding the specific property). And the fact that you’re asking this question sort of implies that you’re not up to speed with the bed stuy brownstone market and maybe even the foreclosure process.
There are lot’s of implicit risk involved in auctions like these (buyer beware).
get off your ass and go find out you have less than 3 hours.
any ideas how much this could fetch at an auction?
I lived in DC in the 1990s, and one of my elderly neighbors lost her house after a relative somehow duped her into taking out a second mortgage. She held on until the authorities came and forcibly removed her and literally heaped all of her belongings on the sidewalk. If that wasn’t pathetic enough, the well-heeled folk of Capitol Hill immediately started grubbing through her posessions and walking off with anything worth anything.
I saw this place or possibly the one next door. The one with the solid wood door. I was there with a broker who wanted to prove a point (the jerk, he was quickly dropped). The interior was in complete disrepair as the owner had turned the place into an SRO. The parlor had been divided with a poorly constructed wall. Same for the garden level. The rear apt. on the parlor level had a water leak, the largest I’d ever seen. It looked like elephantiasis of the wall. I didn’t bother looking upstairs. The owner had begun renovations on the garden floor kitchen which looked very generic and, over-all, shoddy. There were a few nice details like the (sorry, not sure of the term) molding over the entrance to the parlor and the banister.
Or the owner had already died, and the descendents took out a huge mortgage on the place. The house we bought was a foreclosure. From what we understand, the lifelong owner had the house all paid off but when she died her kids took out mortgages or loans on the house they could not pay back. Nice way to lose the family home their parents worked so hard to buy.
With “Financial Freedom Senior Funding” listed as the financier, it was probably a reverse mortgage. Obviously 3.5 years is super short. Maybe the owner passed away.
I could have sworn that this house was on the auction block about 3 or 4 years ago. If I’m not mistaken, it’s on one of those rare to find blocks in Bed Sty (i.e., entirely uniform, entirely tree-lined, etc).
Vulture man the odds are high they’ve owned the house for more than 20 yrs.