House of the Day: 456 Bainbridge Street
It’s tough out there for a house in Bed Stuy. While houses in some of the more expensive neighborhoods in the borough continue to hold their value relatively well in the face of the national housing crisis, neighborhoods like Bed Stuy, which has had its share of subprime and foreclosure problems, are having a tougher…

It’s tough out there for a house in Bed Stuy. While houses in some of the more expensive neighborhoods in the borough continue to hold their value relatively well in the face of the national housing crisis, neighborhoods like Bed Stuy, which has had its share of subprime and foreclosure problems, are having a tougher go of it. Take, for example, the case of the 456 Bainbridge Street: The three-story house still has lots of original detail in the owner’s duplex and a two-bedroom apartment on the top floor to help cover the mortgage. It’s been a long, unfruitful sales process thus far. The house hit the market last July for $695,000 and has undergone three price cuts since, culminating with that week’s that brought the asking price to $525,000. Think this will be the magic number?
456 Bainbridge Street [Douglas Elliman] GMAP P*Shark
Price Cuts at Bed Stuy Townhouses: Is This a Trend? [Brownstoner]
Montrose Morris and 2:01…2:05 just proved your point.
Price chop another 200K and that should get the deal done.
Spinning out of control? Hardly. Of course maybe you could lowball an offer. For most of us it is only in neighborhoods like Bed-Stuy that we can afford a house. Many wouldn’t be comfortable there, perhaps, but for others it can be a place to engage in the renovation and community-building which so many of us enjoy. Obviously if your reaction is “I can never imagine living there” then you shouldn’t. While this is pretty far east of Stuyvesant Heights, it does seem to be located near a number of different train lines.
“i do, and its a wonderful neighborhood with no crime at all.”
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
This is how the neighborhood will actually get gentrified- the gentrifiers will see a price point that makes sense for the investment, and they will be the longer term owner, not the market fad flippers. Bed Stuy architecture is amazing. Long term (like 10-20 years) people should be bullish on bed stuy. Anything that happens much quicker won’t stick and will just be a deviation on a longer term trend.
House is cheap but as a white male w/ wife & child, you couldn’t pay me to live in that ‘hood. Too risky for us white folk. If I were black, I’d jump all over that
It is a nice house, although the pink and maroon paint job is not to my taste.
For the intrepid homesteader, this area is no more out there that Fort Greene was twenty years ago.
If someone was interested in this house, which on the face of it, looks great, the smart thing to do would be to call the precinct and ask about crime stats on this block, or the areas near the nearest subway. To go by the usual fear mongering on this site (Bed Stuy = horrendous crime, etc) makes no sense.
As stated by many people on many occasions, Bed Stuy is HUGE. Check the foreclosure map for activity in the immediate area, not just Bed Stuy as a whole. Base your choices on the actual reality of this block, this house. Drive by there, get out and walk around, talk to people, ask around at the corner bodegas, businesses or churches. If the house is worthy, structurally, etc, then this price is as good as it gets in Brownstone Brooklyn, price wise. It looks like a great house.
here we go again with the ignorant comments about bed stuy. for those of you who don’t live there: i do, and its a wonderful neighborhood with no crime at all. its also a very large area of which some parts are better than others. this house happens to be in a much less desirable area. we bought a year and a half ago and this would not have fetched more than this price then. i don’t think this has anything to do with the subprime mortgage crisis the house was just overpriced for the area. it seems like at this price its a pretty good deal now though, i think it will sell