House of the Day: 15 Lefferts Place
Hey, this whole FSBO thing seems to be catching on! We were sent the link to the site for 15 Lefferts Place, a lovely four-story brownstone just East of Grand Avenue. The house, which is configured as a owner’s triplex over a rental simplex, appears to have a decent amount of detail. There are some…
Hey, this whole FSBO thing seems to be catching on! We were sent the link to the site for 15 Lefferts Place, a lovely four-story brownstone just East of Grand Avenue. The house, which is configured as a owner’s triplex over a rental simplex, appears to have a decent amount of detail. There are some more modern elements, including the kitchen, which appears to be very nice, and some new doors that are trying to look old but not cutting it (a little pet peeve of ours). The rental apartment has some charming original floorboards and the skylight at the top of the stairwell is one of those beautiful oval babies. The front parlor, with pier mirror and floor-to-ceiling wood windows looks like a winner. The price–$1.495 million–is exactly what we would have expected and we bet they’ll come pretty darn close to getting it.
Brownstone FSBO [15 Lefferts Place] GMAP P*Shark
Here’s some math about why owners who have some renatl income are not terribly concerned about a weakening in home prices.
We bought a Cobble Hill 3 family in 1997 for 330,000, we put in about $175,000 in rennovations into duplex and the 2 rentals.
The first year we owned the house the rent roll was $18,000. Today, the rent roll is $46,000, or $3,833/mth.
Our fixed monthly 30 yr mortgage is $3,275, and that is after doing a cash out refi.
If you avearge out the hi and low rent rolls, you come up with an average of $37,000 a year rent roll. (It’s actually been higher than that on average.)
So after 9 years, even excluding the tax benefits of owning the property, our tennants have provided us rental income equal to the initial purchase price of the house.
Thank you tenants.
Time is indeed your friend.
In light of all the positive and optimistic posts on this thread, I’m now bullish on Brooklyn, bullish on Clinton Hill and even more bullish on Lefferts! I say we create a syndicate and buy up every available brownstone and lot on this street and create our own village!!
West, nobody’s forcing you to read the posts.
Jake,
Go ahead and sell if you want.
I’m staying put. I have a fixed housing cost of apprx $2400/month (see 1st post). For that I get to live in a huge newly renovated 5BR bstone triplex in a location I like, customized just the way I want it. And I have total control over my environment. Plus, maybe someday if I retire and move to Florida, maybe I’ll just take the rental income off the building instead of selling. What do you think rents will be like in 20 years? Or maybe the bldg will stay in my family for a couple of generations. That would be way cool. Do you think somebody might be pretty psyched about that in 50 yrs, a 100 yrs?
Anyhow, where could I go if I sold? I’ve seen the rental equivalent advertised for around $7000/month with no tax deductions and zero upside, and living under the whim of whatever the LL wants to charge in the future. I think you’d have to be nuts to hand that kind of money over to a LL each month, no matter how wealthy you are.
Even if you think r.e. prices might crater, don’t you think market rents will be higher in 10 years, perhaps significantly higher. Plus, if you think all markets are going to crater at once, then what do I do with all the proceeds from selling the house? Nothing would be safe.
Tell me what the alternatives are?
OK, Jake. So you bought at an opportune time and think it’s now time to sell. Is that what you’re actually going to do? Where do you intend to live? Do you plan to do that for the rest of your life — buy, then move to a rental every time you feel a change coming in the market? And given that you called yourself “lucky” last time, why do you think you’ll be able to accurately time the market? Aren’t you slightly worried about ending up being the guy who moved to Montana with crates full of bottled water and MREs waiting for the Y2K bug?
If you’re a pro RE investor, that’s one thing, but you don’t make yourself sound that way. If you’re just a layman who’s made a paper profit on your home — and you can comfortably make your mortgage payment — then stop making yourself crazy worrying what will happen to your Monopoly money. And enjoy your house.
Can’t you two get each other’s e-mail addresses and take this ridiculous discussion somewhere else?
Anon-Sloper,
I get your point. I’m just not very optomistic about the future of real estate in NYC. Prices are too high.
You bought at the right time like I did. Now is not the right time to buy. Now is possibly the time to sell.
Jake,
Did you read anything I wrote? Don’t put words in my mouth. My post was not about whether I think r.e. prices could drop sharply or not, it was about the bigger picture. The point I was trying to make is: It doesn’t really matter in the long-run. A drop in r.e. prices does not change my life much. A drop in rents would hurt a bit. A drop in professional income would hurt my savings/investment plan. A drop in stocks would make retirement more difficult. A drop in all at the same time would be most painful, but mostly on an emotional level. Probably the biggest risk would be extended unemployment, but I’d like to think I’ve built up some fairly marketable skills to help mitigate that risk.
Remember, I said it would take several combined simultaneous economic events to make me really truly unhappy, basically your armageddon scenario. For that matter, any of us could be hit by a bus crossing the street. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t prevent me from crossing streets.
and, Jake, if i were an orphan in the Sudan then perhaps Angelina Jolie would be my mother. it is all about luck.