House of the Day: FSBO at 178 Maple
The owners of this house must have a lot of friends! Within the space of about two hours on Friday, four people emailed this listing to us having recently received an email about it. Everyone who had an opinion said the same thing: Gorgeous, pristine house but perhaps a little pricey. If you include the…
The owners of this house must have a lot of friends! Within the space of about two hours on Friday, four people emailed this listing to us having recently received an email about it. Everyone who had an opinion said the same thing: Gorgeous, pristine house but perhaps a little pricey. If you include the finished basement, the house is 3,000 square feet (actually, more like 2,700 according to Property Shark); if you don’t, well, you can do the math. We’d have to agree with the emailers, but you can’t blame the sellers for trying. And you never know–this brownstone is so beautiful you can’t rule out the possibility that someone who’s been looking at absolute crap in this price range in other nabes will walk in and feel like they’ve found a bargain. And if they love, then maybe they have. It only takes one.
FSBO $950,000 [178 Maple] GMAP P*Shark
Great photos which really stretttttch the rooms. If I ever FSBO, I want pix like that, because all in all, this is a fairly small house but the photos read big. Like onomotopia, I agree that it is great for a couple. I live in a house with the same layout in Bay Ridge and of the 4 original small bedrooms on the 2nd floor, two were combined, one is an office and one is a small guest room.
I visted the open house at 178 Maple, and thought they did a wonderful job renovating, the place is lovely. But it is very small for the asking price, particularly in PLG. The kitchen is not eat-in. There is no bathroom on the main floor, you have to go upstairs or down to the basement. Two of the bedrooms are spacious, but the other two are quite small.
156 Maple, while not in such pristine shape, is much bigger, with the two-floor extension on the back, 1/2 bath on first floor, etc. Same with 160 Maple.
But 178 is a cute little house, particularly if you don’t have a family. I’ll be interested to see what it sells for. My guess is around $875K, which ain’t bad considering they bought it six months ago for $500K!!
Whoa Ebomb–why so hostile? I said I wasn’t saying people shouldn’t be allowed to flip, but I was answering a question about what’s wrong with flipping. The thing is, some people have lived through the hard years and now are being priced out when they’re grown up or ready to buy. You guys keep looking at it like it’s just about investment. For some people, it’s about home.
FYI -FSBO—156 had offer first week, deal never fell through—contracts all signed….went for over 900…
Wow, 2 answers on totally opposite sides of the spectrum – not surprising around here.
I have to admit mixed feelings here, I bought my house from a flipper, although I knew perfectly well that’s what was going on. As Anon 1:01 said, I needed an inexpensive fixer upper, I didn’t (don’t) have a lot of money, and because the flipper was a friend, he took back the downpayment in the form of another loan, or I never could have bought the house. I absolutely agree that there should be more programs and opportunities that allow low interest or special term down payment loans, because that is the hardest part of buying a home for the average person – having the downpayment. My friend bought my house in foreclosure, and never set foot in it before buying it. After getting it, he poured a new cement floor in the cellar, sheathed the back of the house in concrete, and put a plywood floor down in the kitchen, as the original floor had large rotted out sections. He also bought a stove for one apartment, and had an ironworker put a couple of sets of bars on a couple of windows. That was it. In return, he sold the house for about twice what he paid for it, which was still below market value for its size, the nabe, etc. Would I have liked to have gotten it for what he did? Of course. I also would have liked to have bought in Bed Stuy for all of the 17 years I lived there when primo, primo houses were going for around $100K back in the early 80’s, and less than primo, but certainly decent were going for $60 – 85K. These are the houses that now go for close to a million. Damn! But I couldn’t do it, I just didn’t have the money. In regards to buying foreclosures – it’s not my business, as it is my friend’s – I don’t have the connections, the capital, or the cojones which are necessary to that business. But he does, and we both profited – I got my house, he got paid.
As Ebomb said, I am glad the oldtimers are getting good prices for their houses, as God knows, they have been through the wars (sometimes literally), and are now able to see some profit from their hard work. And I am certainly glad my house has tripled in worth. However I don’t think his last sentence is valid, people are forced to live in a lot of places they don’t want to, not because they are too stupid to buy, but more because they can’t. Again, the answer to more home ownership is figuring out how to get more people access to downpayment money. I don’t see that as middleclass welfare, but as expanding the pool of homeowners, which provides for an increased tax base, and more stable neighborhoods and cities.
It seems to me that flippers are going to have to concentrate more on the fringes of established neighborhoods, and start going to new places where prices are still low, such as East NY, and buy up and hold for a while until the demand for houses starts in those places, and mark my words, it will soon enough. It would seem that to buy high, and not be able to sell for much higher, would not be a worth the effort. But what do I know?
Wrong — Anon 1:00AM!
Flippers, especially those who properly renovate and then sell for a much higher price, are helping the people who already own homes in a once blighted area. Those people, the ones who lived through the hard years (for lack of a better term), deserve to see their homes rise in value.
The fact that lower income newcomers can’t afford a house in a particular area anymore is not something to be lamented. The oldtimers moved in before prices rose and “deserve” the run up in prices that flippers, developers, gentrifiers, yuppies, and whoever else, bring to a neighborhood by paying ever increasing prices.
A “sucker” as you put it, does not deserve to “catch an even break.” A sucker should stay in his shoebox rip off rental apartment and suck his thumb.
If you’re in the market for a house to actually live in–you know, raise the kids, get to know the neighbors, grow old–it sucks to see everything affordable bought not by someone who loves and is committed to the house and community but by someone who uses it solely as an investment and pushes the price way out of your grasp. I’m not saying people shouldn’t flip, I’m not saying they’re not smart, I’m not saying it’s not a free country–I’m just saying it sucks. There are a lot of people out house hunting who can handle carrying costs of a mortgage and home repair loan, but they don’t have a huge bolus of cash for the down payment. Fixer uppers used to be the refuge of those with energy and imagination but not a lot of scratch. Now, they’re being flipped for twice the price–which also pushes up prices of other houses in the neighborhood and makes it harder and harder for a sucker to catch an even break.
I don’t get it. If a flipper bought the place in run down condition a couple of months ago, unless it only needed a new coat of paint and some new appliances, it looks like someone sunk some money and thought into it. The place is really nice. The purist in me wouldn’t have used some of those particular light fixtures, but they are period appropriate. The kitchen doesn’t win any design awards, but it is decent enough for someone to live with for a few years. The bathroom is Eh!, but again, livable. They did a wonderful job on the floors and the wainscoting and other detail looks pristine. And you have that large back yard, which is clear of dead trees, junk and the other crap often seen in cheap flips, as they usually don’t think about the back yards. All in all – a nice job.
So what’s the gripe about it being a flip? Is it only because they stand to make a nice profit, marketing a house for what similar houses in the nabe are going for? I can understand the grousing if they had done the usual crappy coat of paint job plus low end Home Depot kitchen, but this is a nice renovation. Anyone want to enlighten me?
If you don’t like where the sun is move it.