House of the Day: 208 Hancock Street
The days of someone paying a lot of money for a wreck of a house in Bed Stuy are over, if they were ever really here at all. (Most of the houses in Bed Stuy that sold for close to a million dollars or more in the last couple of years were either in good…
The days of someone paying a lot of money for a wreck of a house in Bed Stuy are over, if they were ever really here at all. (Most of the houses in Bed Stuy that sold for close to a million dollars or more in the last couple of years were either in good shape or had something pretty spectacular to recommend them.) As much as we dig the exterior of this brownstone at 208 Hancock Street, we’d be very surprised if someone paid the asking price of $859,000. There are no interior photos of the 3-family, 3,600-square-foot house, but judging from those windows, we’d be surprised if the inside of the house had been particularly well-preserved. So what do you think the market is for something like this? Not very strong, we’d guess.
208 Hancock Street [Weichert] GMAP P*Shark
Amzi Hill:
How can one get that 1894 Brooklyn Eagle article? Is it easy to search for that article in the online archives for the Eagle? It would be great to read it!
I live a block and a half from this house and have walked past it many times, although I haven’t taken notice of that particular building. It’s a lovely block in a great part of Bed-Stuy. Before I moved here, from 1989 until 2007 I lived in Clinton Hill, half a block from Mr. Brownstoner. At least we have a decent supermarket (Foodtown at Brooklyn Ave. and Fulton St.) here, more than I can say for CH. And the A train comes a lot more often than the C so even though we are 3/4 of a mile further from Manhattan here, it’s a lot faster on the subway.
Not saying that it’s worth the asking price, but you get a hell of a lot more house for your money here than in Clinton Hill. As for rentals, unless they are hovels, floor-throughs go for $1300-1700/month in this part of Bed-Stuy.
Montrose Morris – How much value do you think gets added to a house because it is in an historic district? I used to think it would add significantly, but I’ve come to learn that not everyone places value on that sort of thing. Much to my suprise, I’ve found that details and condition of a home seem to be more eye catching and money fetching than a house with less of the same in an historic location. I realize that when it comes down to it, it’s all in the eye of the beholder, but I’m wondering what your thoughts are –or if a general consensus exists here (as if it ever would) — since you added the historic factor to your list of selling points.
Everyone who thinks that this house is overpriced are out of your minds, since I am a real estate agent who works down the block from this house, you all will see that this house will actually sell for the price it is asking. Kudos for the agent selling this property as to I will help him/her sell this property at the asking price since thats how much bedstuy should be worth.
Dave, you think you know anything about bedstuy, if you were smart enough, you would actually do comps for this house and not insult everyone in this forum. Tough guy!!!
I take it back…Montose Morris (the Brownstoner reader, not the architect) is the most optimistic person I know!! (or not know).
Nice to hear your thoughts on the area and house.
We’ll have to keep track of what it sells for. I’m happy to be proven wrong.
Learn the most from your mistakes…right?
I’m not interested in joining another crime in Bed Stuy discussion, as others have handled it well. All I will say is once again, people forget the size of the area. Bed Stuy is huge. Again – Bed Stuy is huge. Media people are clueless. If there is a violent crime in central Brooklyn, they report it as Bed Stuy, whether it is or not. They have done this for years. I can’t tell you how many times over the past 25 years I’ve had people ask me if I felt safe there because of some highly publicized crime that did not even take place in the entirety of BS. This block is not a high crime block or area.
I also don’t think you can judge a book by its cover or a house by its windows. I have been constantly suprised by the interiors of homes that from the outside were no great shakes. If this is a Monty Morris house, he was building for an upper middle class customer, and this house would have had very nice appointments. Who knows what could still be in there? Vinyl windows mean that someone at least saw the need to replace the old ones, so maybe they also kept up the inside, and only put in what was needed for apartment living. Most landlords in this part of Bklyn were too poor to do more than sandwich a kitchenette and a bathroom into spaces that were once dressing rooms or closets.
If it still has some goodies, and is in pretty good shape otherwise, I see it going for anywhere from $785K to $840K. Why? Location: good block, historic provenance, close proximity to subway and Restoration Plaza, soon to be landmarked area. There are a lot of newly restored homes on this block, and a very strong interest in the community. I’m still bullish on BS (and CH), and this area in particular, is already seeing changes.
Sam & 11217 – just curious have you renovated a brownstone now or in the past? What i think is inflated is your 300-400k renovation numbers? How exactly does that break down? I have and I am still in the process of renovating a brownstone, that is a legal 3 family and was broken up into apartments. The broker never showed pictures of the inside and you guys would have speculated and trashed it. Well it needed updated plumbing, electrical and complete renovation. We wanted a ‘nice’ reno b/c we live in it as a one family. We are 90% complete and have prob spent close to 100k (not including furniture – still don’t have much). We have what most would consider ‘high end’ appliances, granite, solid wood floors, recessed lighting (sorry brownstoner) and we stripped and stained all of the wood. This has taken 2 years but no where near 300-400k and many that come to our home say it’s ‘one of the nicest’ reno’s they have seen. We are not DIY so there is no sweat equity here – i’m just saying these comments about reno’s are more outrageous than the house prices!
What, just because you never heard of something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Time for an education:
Bedford Corners is an historic name for the area around Bedford/Nostrand/Fulton Sts. As a matter of fact, the Dutch bought land from the Kanarsee Indians, and in 1668, the first public building was approved for building (a tavern, of course) in the township of Bedford, which was an anglicized form of the Dutch word Bestevarr, which they translated from the Indian word for “council meeting placeâ€. The name Bedford Corners evolved from that, as the area became a busy trading and transit hub for merchants and settlers from Flatbush and other towns in Brooklyn and Long Island. The wealthy, and slaveholding Lefferts family was one of the most successful landowners and business owners in the area. In 1776, following the Battle of Brooklyn, the first large battle of the Revolutionary War, Bedford, and other parts of Brooklyn, were then occupied by the British for the next eight years, finally leaving in 1783. Incidentally, when they left, the British denuded the forests of Brooklyn, shipping tons of lumber back to England. Hardly any trees in Brooklyn predate the Revolutionary War.
The names Bedford and Bedford Corners appear on old maps of Brooklyn, and in documents dating back from these periods. Today, the name is used to designate that area of Bed Stuy near the original town, specifically Atlantic to about Gates, Franklin to around Throop, give or take a few blocks. This was a large upper middle class area in the 19th century, and is filled with architecturally significant homes, apartment buildings and churches. It contains some of the finest work of Montrose Morris, Amzi Hill and other great Brooklyn based architects. This house is on one of the prime blocks in this area, and will certainly be landmarked, especially if Montrose Morris designed it.