House of the Day: Pipe Dream Price on Clifton
The owners of this place must be smoking a little of what’s being sold on their corner. Even with our bias towards the neighborhood (we’re just a couple of blocks away), we can’t sign off on the $1.1 million asking price for this Clifton Place brownstone. We’ll agree that there are some beautiful old details–the…
The owners of this place must be smoking a little of what’s being sold on their corner. Even with our bias towards the neighborhood (we’re just a couple of blocks away), we can’t sign off on the $1.1 million asking price for this Clifton Place brownstone. We’ll agree that there are some beautiful old details–the woodwork, in particular–that could clean up nicely, but this is a serious renovation here, not a tune up. The windows alone, given the landmark nabe, will run $20,000 easily. If you’re lucky, the rest of the job, including new plumbing, electricity, plastering, etc., will cost $300,000 (and could easily cost double that depending on the circumstances). So assuming everything goes well, a year later you’re in for $1.4 million and $1.5 million (don’t forget those carrying costs while you do the work). If that’s your price range, it’s hard to see why you wouldn’t opt for this Corcoran listing at Greene or this one on Cambridge. We’d be surprised if this place fetches over $1 million–at $950,000 we think it starts to look interesting.
58 Clifton Place [Corcoran] GMAP
‘Stoner, you’re missing a listing that makes this Clifton Pl listing even more perplexing – 66 Clifton Pl, listed by the same broker at Corcoran:
http://tinyurl.com/8o22d
2 DOORS DOWN from 58 Clifton, for $1.285. 66 Clifton is a single family with a very nice renovation. It would take about $300K minimum to make 58 as nice as 66. I seem to recall that 58 has hung at $1.1M for a very long time. Certainly the owner’s are crazy. Seeing that 66 has been on the market for a couple weeks and appears to be under contract already, poor Ms. Cash is probably eager to show the owners of 58 that the property needs to be priced lower. Much lower.
the house is cambridge is far from a dump. i know as my husband and i owned a dump until we fixed it up. everything needs work unlsess you do it yourself–get a clue.
re: the Greene House, I don’t like the kitchen downstairs either and the bedroom off the parlor is even stranger. If I got it, I would change that pretty quickly.
Re the greene house: I saw it two years ago or so, then on the market for 925k (w/ corcoran as well). Seemed steep at the time, and agree that the configuration was off – it just didn’t appeal to me. According to property shark it didn’t sell, wonder what will happen now. My sentiments notwithstanding, it does seem that the price is more in line now w/ market than it was 2 years back.
Sorry to be negative, Judson, but I wasn’t taken with the Greene house -it had an odd configuration in the owner’s lower half (kitchen on garden level and bedroom off the front parlor) if i remember correctly, and there’s a bus stop right in front of it. I’d be curious to see how much it goes for.
I do recall discussion of this place last summer too. If it needs all of the guts redone (plumbing, electric etc) plus all of the other “cosmetic” work, it is quite an ask. Plus it does not look like a very large house. Not too wide and the 3rd floor looks like it is not a full height floor.
We saw this in the summer when it was originally listed at 1.3K. Even at 950K the price would be too steep for what you’d be buying. There weren’t even mechanicals in the building (ie — no heating or plumbing). My boyfriend does renovations for a living so we know of what we speak and they would have had to chop the price nearly in half for it to make sense. It’s a BIG project to get involved in and still pay top dollar.
The Greene house was ok. It used to be like 200K more asking price so this would be another price chopper.
The Cambridge Place house is pretty much a dump. Interestingly enough, Warburg was originally listing it for something like 1.9M.
I’m told that the house on Clifton Place has an offer on it. I wonder what it is.
Does anyone have any thoughts on the Greene house. I liked it a lot.