House of the Day: 10% Off at 450 8th Street
After four weeks on the market, 450 8th Street in Park Slope just got a haircut on the order of 10 percent. The four-story, two-family house has nice bones and looks to be in decent but not perfect condition. Despite some very nice details like original wood paneling and parquet floors that you’d expect from…
After four weeks on the market, 450 8th Street in Park Slope just got a haircut on the order of 10 percent. The four-story, two-family house has nice bones and looks to be in decent but not perfect condition. Despite some very nice details like original wood paneling and parquet floors that you’d expect from a brownstone in this location, there’s a slight shabbiness to the photos (get that a/c out of the window!) that may account in part for why this place didn’t move at $2.2 million. We suspect at its new price of $1,990,000, it should attract some real interest.
450 8th Street [Corcoran] GMAP P*Shark
450 8th Street Reduced [Natefind]
also not a millionaire, here. I traded up four times to finally get my brownstone. And as a single person, I rent out three floors/units to get a chunk of my operating and ownership costs covered. I’m a non-profiteer by profession with a modest income. I’ve just taken some carefully calculated risks, moved every couple of years, and been helped a lot by the RE market. (I don’t expect any medals for this…just sayin it IS possible…)
“It only takes 2 people earning a total of 200K to afford a 4-5K mortgage.”
Huh? Hubby and I make 300K and I don’t think that it would be at all ok for us to carry a 4-5K mortgage a month – excluding property taxes, maintenance, and all the other necessities of life. But then again, we are not accustomed to living entirely on credit cards and paycheck to paycheck, which apparently most of the country and many NY’ers are.
I lived on the block, which is very peaceful and quiet. 8th Street between 7th and 8th (not a park block). The owner of this house is smoking some serious stuff. She started by passing around flyers to individuals on the blcok saying she would give a discount of $2.1M to anyone who bought it directly through her. The house is narrow 17 feet wide at best. She is insisting (although I don’t know how legally she could enforce it) that the buyer keep it a one family. The house is rather drab for the price. Is it a nice Park Slope brownstone, definitely, but it is not a premier one. If she thinks her house is worth close to $2M in this market, she is crazy. At the height of teh market, this house was at best $1.8M. Anyone who even entertains this house for that cost is nuts.
and 4-5K is enough to obtain a house valued between 900 and 1 million, assuming no rental income.
“A million dollar house is somewhere around an $8K mortgage a month.”
8k a month would buy a house priced at approximately 1.6 million.
We should not forget in any discussion regarding purchasing power that many buyers manage a large mortgage because they are 2-income families. It only takes 2 people earning a total of 200K to afford a 4-5K mortgage.
There are many routes to a property priced at over $1MM. Not everyone moves from a rental to a brownstone. We had been in the market ten years when we bought ours and over that time grew our original downpayment from about $80K to $250K. During that time we amassed savings of a bit more than $150K and borrowed the rest for a purchase price of $1.3MM. We also rent out a floor. Before the mortgage interest allowance is factored in, but after rental income, we have a monthly nut of $3500. Still a lot of money but do-able for two professionals. And we have enough space to live here for the rest of our lives. That’s our story but there are countless others. It’s a fallacy to think everyone buying a brownstone is a Wall St millionnaire.
“There must be a massive amount of people making big bucks out there, as evidenced by the endless parade of luxury new construction and multi-million dollar brownstones stretching from Bay Ridge to Bed Stuy, and everywhere in between. Is EVERYONE working on Wall Street? Or doctors, lawyers?”
No, they’re just faking all those big-money sales, same way they faked the moon landing.
The truth is that there ARE a lot of people in NYC nowadays with tons of cash — they work in finance, law, management consulting, advertising, medicine, etc. So that’s who has money for these types of real estate prices. NYC is turning into one of those trophy cities where the middle class gets pushed out, leaving behind only the poor to provide services to the rich. I make $250k and in this context, I’m far from rich.
Yup- you (and I) went into the wrong field. No Lexus for you!