House of the Day: Bay Ridge Beauty
Wow. The more Bay Ridge listings we see, the more we are impressed. (Is it just us, or does it seem like more of them are popping up with the bulge bracket brokers?) After already publishing the Open House Picks on Friday (in which we attributed this place to Jabour Realty), we came across the…
Wow. The more Bay Ridge listings we see, the more we are impressed. (Is it just us, or does it seem like more of them are popping up with the bulge bracket brokers?) After already publishing the Open House Picks on Friday (in which we attributed this place to Jabour Realty), we came across the same house on Corcoran for almost $100k more. Go figure. Anyway, this one-family limestone has some impressive original wood detail, especially on the parlor floor. (Though there is one shot of a wall of exposed brick in the kitchen which makes us glad we decided not to expose any brick in our house.) It seems like these Bay Ridge 3-story rounded-front limestones are similarly priced to those in Prospect Lefferts. Bay Ridge is probably safer and has more infrastructure, but Lefferts is more convenient for Manhattan and Prospect Park access. Which nabe do you think deserves a higher valuation?
78th Street [Corcoran]
We bought in BR last October, 725K for 2600sf nicely renovated with a handful of details entact, 2000sf of living space and 600sf of rental space. Our commute into the city by train can we long, but by car our record is 13 minutes (with some traffic).
We rented in Carrol Gardens before, besides Caputo’s and one health food store, and the Gowanus Beer Garden:>) we like it more here for many reasons.
The house you posted under the “open house” is much smaller than ours for more money. The 78th st house is also smaller but seems nice and that area is more quiet than us (74th between 4/5).
I dont know Lefferts well but we saw more reasons and value here…..
Emkay: Nothing sounds more provincial than referring to Manhattan as ‘the city’ (who am I paying all my income and real estate taxes to?)
– then dismissing some neighborhoods as like Queens or SI. We are one city – with many different neighborhoods with lots of different history and personality. Even a single neighborhood differs one block to next. New York is great city to live – and wish people weren’t so geography-status conscious.
I’m also new to LG and agree w/everything Steve said. Back to the questions of valuation, here are the factors I’d consider and where I’d put each neighborhood:
Housing Stock:
BR is a huge neighborhood, so comparing apples to apples, it becomes a question condition– BR has always been middle class and the stock there (as in Lefferts Manor) has probably always been single family. Who knows what the block looks like? If it’s anything like Dyker Heights there could be some McMansions or maybe some Bricolage wonder nearby. The zoning restrictions on Lefferts Manor give it a slight, slight, slight edge in my book.
Proximity to the city: If it doesn’t matter to you then what the hell are you doing in Brooklyn? Go live somewhere that’s actually cheap! Proximity counts, if you can make it ino the city in less than 40 minutes from 86th st, I’ll eat my hat. It’s about 25 from Prospect Park Station on the ever more reliable Q and B lines. LG by a mile on this one.
Ammenities: Bay Ridge, Bay Ridge, Bay Ridge. But the roti there sucks alsmost as badly as the pizza here does. Fresh Direct is the great leveler. And we’re a minute from the Saturday GAP Greenmarket. Still, Bay Ridge wins.
Park Life: I absolutely love the waterfront in Bay Ridge, but it’s easy to be there and be pretty damn far from a park (not this house, but many.) LG is by design close to the park. 5 minute walk to the park from even the furthest reaches of the neighborhood(15 if you stop to chat with everyone who says hello). I’d rather have to drive to a grocery store than to a park.
Socially conservative: We’ve got a lot of churches around here, and you don’t move to either of these neighborhoods if you’re looking for Williamsburg. Either one is great for kids, and I like that mine will refer to adults as Mr. so-and-so and Mrs. So-and-so as many around here insist. Call it a tie.
Safety: Ok, BR’s got that one. It’s not THAT bad here though. Certainly no worse than Many of the higher end neighborhoods in Brownstone Brooklyn.
So, in the end my math gives Lefferts Gardens a slight edge. If it really catches on around here, the limited stock might push prices a bit higher, but if things crash we could be hurt. I kind of think of bay ridge as a little bit of queens (or staten island) right here in brooklyn. The proces will be slower to move, but a bit steadier (in both directions)
My family moved to Prospect Lefferts three years ago from Park Slope, and there are a lot of great things about this area. I’m sure it’s not for everyone, but we like it.
We love being so close to the park. Our four-year-old goes to preschool across the street from the park and he visits the playground almost every day. My nine-year-old daughter wakes me up so that we can play soccer in the Nethermead before school. And we’re just five minutes from the Botanic Garden, the zoo, the carousel and the Audubon Center. There aren’t a lot of shops and restaurants here, but there’s plenty of things to do, and we take advantage of all of them.
The neighborhood is very tight. We’ve made a lot of friends here. Since there isn’t much in the way of restaurants and shops, we tend to hang around at each other’s homes. My kids play in front of the house on the sidewalk, and roam from one back yard to the next. We share the block with people who have lived here since the ’40s and they’ve made us feel right at home.
Security can be an issue, but for the most part, people deal with it and go about their life. My wife and I come and go at all hours of the day and night. The 71st precinct is putting a lot of resources into the area, especially Flatbush Avenue.
Amenities? Okay, you got me there. It’s pretty much raw, unreconstructed 1970s New York. We have a fine selection of bodegas with old-fashioned yellow awnings and cashiers who work behind sheets of bullet proof plastic. My four year old loves them because they have great selections of candy. I took him to The Chocolate Room on 5th Avenue in Park Slope a few weeks ago. I bought him a truffle, but he prefers the X-Men candy that he bought at the bodega. Oh, and there’s a great cocktail lounge on Rogers Avenue called Brooklyn & Slims. That’s about it, though.
Why the hostility? He doesn’t like Bay Ridge and lives in Park Slope, so what? It’s just one opinion.
Hands down, Bay Ridge keeps getting better and better. They just rezoned the area and stood up to the developers to keep the feel of the Nab. I have to agree, the flux of Muslim famlies make it great for my kids, everyone gets along. We moved from the slope where my kids played with other’s that are taught “if it feels good, it must be good”.. Thats not how I want to bring up my family. The arab kids are fun.
Yes, Sloper, thank God you managed to buy in a neighborhood where you will never have to encounter someone whose opinions differ from your own. Thank God places like Park Slope exist, so that people can leave their insular, conservative hometowns where everyone thinks alike and find insular, liberal neighborhoods where everybody thinks alike. For if there’s one thing we tolerant, diversity-minded liberals should never have to do, it’s tolerate a diversity of opinion.
I used to live in BR’s less classy cousin, Bensonhurst. I’ve hung out in BR, and I’ve been to visit Lefferts. I’d take Lefferts any day. For all the reasons the “socially conservative” poster likes BR – I really dislike it.
Fortunately, I live/own in Park Slope. Glad I don’t have to make that choice anymore.
To each his/her own.
as someone who lives in prospect lefferts who is neither black nor white, i will agree that my neighborhood does not have a lot of the amenities i enjoyed as a former renter in park slope. but i would like to vouch for “neighborhood feel”… since moving in last year, one of our neighbors has given us 2 fresh fish that he caught himself upstate (wish that he had scaled ’em too!), another a home-made bottle of hot sauce, another a huge framed photograph of the brooklyn bridge that he took himself, and another a crayola portrait of me and my husband (alas, she’s only 7 but shows great potential). what’s wonderful about this neighborhood is that it’s been incredibly stable over the years…our next door neighboor, who is easily in her 60s, grew up in her house. the sad reality is that many of our neighbors are growing older and passing away… i just hope the ones who move in are as generous with their time and talents.