House of the Day: 348 Clermont Avenue Shell
It’s rare to find a total shell of a brownstone in Fort Greene these days, but Townsley & Gay has a quintessential one on Clermont Avenue listed for $975,000 (cash only). Set Speed says the building is in such bad shape that the price “might as well be considered the cost of the land.” While…
It’s rare to find a total shell of a brownstone in Fort Greene these days, but Townsley & Gay has a quintessential one on Clermont Avenue listed for $975,000 (cash only). Set Speed says the building is in such bad shape that the price “might as well be considered the cost of the land.” While the interior photos (which T&G deserves credit for being so forthcoming with) reveal that there’s really nothing left to save on the inside, we hope that the LPC won’t let the facade be torn down. (The building is safely within the FG Historic District.) The listing mentions that the house is a former SRO, but doesn’t mention whether the Certificate of No Harrassment has been gotten already. Given all this, what do you think about the price?
Listing #97 [Townsley & Gay] GMAP P*Shark
Clermont Ave shell on market for $975K [Set Speed]
On average it costs about 100k a floor with a well priced contractor to gutt renovate a townhouse.
This is an average figure from experience.
What more do you want? It’s impossible to be more precise unless I personally inspected the house with my contractor and I’m not going to waste my time doing that.
4:52 is correct about costs. This house won’t go to some individual who builds a home for himself/herself. It will be a developer who makes condos on each floor and sells them for $800-900K each.
Thank you 5:15, I am in recovery.
I agree with the above poster.
I’ve bought properties similar to the one above, gutt renovated them, and successfully flipped. I also have have long term relationships with contractors who give me very good prices.
If a contractor himself buys the house and does the work on his own, it still wouldn’t be worth it.
A Million dollars cash is MUCH better spent as a downpayment on a 4 million dollar property with the potential to make a million bucks or more than on a one million dollar property with the potential to make OPPTOMISTICALLY two hundred thousand.
OK,
People are throwing around a lot of numbers and opinions (which is great, of course, and part fo why we all love the site). Would a few of you (those of you who think it would be relatively cost-effective, and those of you who think this is a money pit) put some real metrics on the line? How do you go about arriving at your initial back of the envelope number for renovation costs? I and others (Donatella, I feel your pain every time I read one of your posts) am curious to learn more about what you see in dollars when you see a house like this one.
Anyone that pays $950K for this place is going to lose their shirt. It will cost $700K to renovate and will take 3 years. Assume $950K purchase and $700K renovation (hard + soft). Cost is about $1.65. Carrying the place, even at 6.0% interest is going to add another $300k. You’re cost basis is $2.0 million. How much are you going to sell it for? Factor in the risk with Landmarking + SRO. You really need to discount your bid if you’re going to make money on this place.
4:46 was me; thought I was logged in…
Dear 4:18, I am curious about how you would approach buying and rebuilding a house like this. Assuming that the Certificate of non-harrassment could be gotten and financing or $$ were available, how would you approach whether or not buying and rebuilding this house was possible? Getting a structural engineer to evaluate everything but particularly the freestanding wall? Assuming that it was stable enough, and you could sell the house for 1.8 million dollars in 2 years, how much would you pay?
all of this* is done all the time in Harlem.
* building out shells that were as dilapidated as this bld or worse. These brownstones were generally very solidly built and withstand an extraordinary amount of abuse.
* dealing with SRO issues (3yrs since last habited is the general window of risk but can be tricky – need specialist advice)
* dodgy ownership issues/brokers/speculators
That said, it takes a lot of $$$ & guts & I would be more wary of any place that has a freestanding side wall (like this one).