House of the Day: 386 State Street
Holy Fried Green Tomatoes! A certain actress (hint: not Kathy Bates) has decided to bail on the Boerum Hill townhouse she picked up only last year. What the 12.5-footer lacks in width it makes up for in exposed wood beams and marble fireplaces. The asking price of $1,465,000 looks low on an absolute basis for…
Holy Fried Green Tomatoes! A certain actress (hint: not Kathy Bates) has decided to bail on the Boerum Hill townhouse she picked up only last year. What the 12.5-footer lacks in width it makes up for in exposed wood beams and marble fireplaces. The asking price of $1,465,000 looks low on an absolute basis for the neighborhood but when you consider the four-story house is only 1,680 square feet, they’re hardly giving it away. Especially when last year’s market-clearing price was $1,275,000. It also looks to us like the house is completely devoid of its crown moldings. Mon dieu!
386 State Street [Corcoran] GMAP P*Shark
I would love to see some data to back up the claim that “almost every person who has bought a house in Brooklyn over the past few decades have [sic] come from Manhattan” or “more than half of the homes bought in Brooklyn for over a million dollars are bought by Manhattan residents.” I just don’t see it. Sure, there are lots of Manhattan transplants – but over half? This data is readily available from the city. Would make a great research project if you had a spare intern.
I agree with this part of your statement, though: “The typical Brooklyn home buyer is [SOMEONE] who owned a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment and traded up.” Just not a “former Manhattanite” as you wrote, but a Brooklynite. Most of my homeowner neighbors traded up from Brooklyn apartments.
rediculous but not impossible – she was foolish enough to pay too much so there may be someone out there who’s at least equally as silly.
Oops, dead “quiet”, that is…
Thanks for the cue, I just responded.
6:27, nice post and I wish you lots of happiness in your place. If I were to go back to apartment living, I think at this point I would really try my hardest to get the top floor as no noise above can be priceles, having lived with some very loud surrounding neighbors. It’s dead quite for me now and I actually hear birds singing when I wake up and nothing else (and am still so close to Manhattan).
Your turn, Biff.
It’s all about the trade-offs. When I lived in a brownstone coop (read no services, and you work, hard, to maintain the building), I hated dealing with my neighbors on the board, the noise from upstairs and down, yuck. Owning a house would have been a much better choice. But I didn’t choose that (though I could have gotten a house for the price of my 3-bdrm coop) because, at the time, I had neither the time nor the money for the renovations the houses needed, and I wanted (needed) to share the costs of taxes, heat, and building maintenance in a coop.
Now that I sold and am renting an even larger apartment in a large full-service building, on the top floor with noise above me, and very little from below, I’m happy as a clam. The only drawback, as far as I can see, is that I may not be able to stay forever, unless I can afford to buy it if the owner of my apartment decides to sell. And that I’m not earning a bunch of equity like I did on my coop – but that’s OK for now, as I can rent this place for far, far cheaper than I could own it, even with a really hefty (like 50%) downpayment. And I’ve no coop board responsibilities! Yeah!
Sure, I’m used to the convenience of having it all on one floor, having lived in aparments all of my adult life. But I’m sure if I wanted to buy a house, I’d get used to the stairs. It all depend on what works for you at a given point in time.
Well…You don’t think the actress that bought the place was a Manhattan resident before she bought it?? I do.
Let’s say more than half of the homes bought in Brooklyn for over a million dollars are bought by Manhattan residents then.
Does that make you happier?
Don’t know where you live, 6:14 but in PLG the majority of the new homeowners we’ve met came from Manhattan.