House of the Day: 306 Clinton Avenue
Behind many good deals lies a sad story. Such is the case with today’s House of the Day. After inheriting the brownstone at 306 Clinton Avenue from her father, the current owner’s battle with mental illness prevented her from caring for the house—or from paying the property tax. So after three years, a judge has…
Behind many good deals lies a sad story. Such is the case with today’s House of the Day. After inheriting the brownstone at 306 Clinton Avenue from her father, the current owner’s battle with mental illness prevented her from caring for the house—or from paying the property tax. So after three years, a judge has ordered the house sold. The listing price is an absurdly low $925,000. A neighbor who attended the open house yesterday reports that there’s lots of architectural detail (“Original woodwork, fixtures on the doors, original parquet inlaid floors and even some original light fixtures”) still in place, in spite of the neglect the house has suffered. She also reports that the place was crawling with a lot of “developer types” and gave us the heads-up in the hopes of catching the attention of someone who will restore the place properly to live in. So how ’bout it, shoppers? The broker’s name is Bart Schwartz; he can be reached at 718-376-9666 (office) or 718-753-1727 (cell). All bids are due by June 4, at which point the judge will declare a winner. Update: The original source of this story dropped us another email in response to some of the comments.
It seems that there might be a bit of confusion aut the owner’s situation. A number of years ago, her guardians and social worker realized that the owner could no longer care for herself alone in a brownstone that had no electrity, no water and no heat. So, a few years ago, she moved to live in a more therapeutic environment where she can receive the treatment and medication that she needs. I wonder if people were upset about the sale because they thought that she was effectively being evicted from the premises, which is not the case. The house has been vacant and slowly falling apart for a number of years now and the proceeds of the sale that would go to the trust could only benefit her in continuing to finance the care that she has been receiving. I hope this clears up any confusion.
What would a fixed up two family be on this block. 1.7m? with carrying costs and selling costs and renovation costs and buying costs — that doesn’t leave a lot of profit even at the unlikely cost of 925k.
Don’t developers always go for a $1m payday?
Re: 3:44. What are you, a developer or a RE agent? You sound like one of the two.
my butt smells
What’s so sad? The mentally ill owner could have burned the house down. Or she could have burned half he block down, or she could have fallen down the stairs and been found a week later. Those things happen, they are sad. Here, the house is being sold for a pretty penny to someone who can take care of it and the sale proceeds can go towards paying for an appropriate assisted living arrangement for the disabled lady. That’s a good thing.
Re: 3:25, I don’t know that the weirdos actually converge. I think they prefer to complain about the photos and the floor plans, but hardly anyone ever posts after the fact.
Re: 2:09, nice to read an empathetic post in this otherwise slightly cruel forum. Not my area but my understanding is, the liens get satisfied in the order of preference as determined by law, and owner gets if anything is left over, but that is often not the case or it would never have gone to foreclosure. Very sad and a reminder of the human beings involved in all of this.
If I ever sold my house, I’d hope brownstoner didn’t pick it up. People pick the poor house to death, and then 100s of real estate wierdos converge on the open house with no intent to buy.
This is a perfect old brownstone.
A gem.
well now that this has reached brownstoner, the winning bid is going to be outlandish ..
anyone trying to buy to restore it properly has to over-bid developers, who will use cheapest bidder labor to make two generic $1m+ condos.
I think a winning bid would be much higher than asking price.