House of the Day: 271 Stratford Road
The owners of 271 Stratford Road in Beverley Square West paid $985,000 for this three-story house just a year ago. It sounds like they may have performed some renovations in the meantime. To our eyes, the kitchen and bathrooms don’t quite match the lovely details of the first floor, but they’re certainly passable. Renovations or…

The owners of 271 Stratford Road in Beverley Square West paid $985,000 for this three-story house just a year ago. It sounds like they may have performed some renovations in the meantime. To our eyes, the kitchen and bathrooms don’t quite match the lovely details of the first floor, but they’re certainly passable. Renovations or not, the question remains whether this place will really be able to fetch the current asking price of $1,125,000 in this market. Seems aggressive, but you never know.
271 Stratford Road [Mary Kay Gallagher] GMAP P*Shark
househunt
“We tried negotiating this summer and we’re told 3-5%”
Anything before Sept 15th 2008 is null and void.
Its a new world now.
No comps are relevant.
Im with you Muffy
The house has vinyl siding. OK? It is a refugee from Bayone, NJ.
It will not be worth one million dollars for ten more years.
NEXT!
…..honestly, I think the economic downturn has been accepted as reality everywhere except on Brownstoner.
So, Miss Muffett what is “low ball” these days? It seems that brokers price about 50,000 over and that’s meant to be the deal. We tried negotiating this summer and we’re told 3-5% was all they would move down. Is low ball 10% off asking? 15 or even 20%? Of course if the ask is still ridiculous, as in the case of this house, the perhaps it should be more. Anyway, just curious how you pierced the denial.
If you say so. Maybe they will drop equal to fringe areas. Good luck with your counter offer.
Well Aussie, here’s an anecdote. We recently placed a low-ball bid on a property in a very prime area. The realtor originally said the owner would not even deign to counter-offer. But recently, we were approached again to renew discussion very close to our lowball. So some prices, even in prime areas, are starting to drop a lot.
Muffy (your new name as of yesterday), down sizing seems so final. Human psyche says to me that people have to be forced to take this step. Like selling (anything) at a loss, it is something that only the informed and the most disciplined will do. Let’s face it, almost no-one is truly informed, and of the informed only very few are disciplined. Most have to be forced to sell even when it is in their best interest to do so. It’s a lot like a margin call.
Lots of people are scared of losing their jobs, I agree, but a comparatively small number actually will. They will be the ones that sell their homes. ARMS could have played a similar role if people had found that they could not pay the new rate, but this bullet has been dodged to a large degree, for now. Speculation in prime areas happened but it was not rife.
DOW and lechacal have the confidence to sell and wait because they are so sure of the magnitude of the drop and they see a home as an investment. This is rare, comparatively. I have no confidence in any prediction of the magnitude, and there is the spectre of intervention.
I have lived through a number of downturns and owned prime and less than prime through them. It has always amazed me how the drops in prime locations are limited.
I know this is not want you want to hear (nor probably what you believe), but it is my experience as well as my opinion. It was taught to me by my father, ignored by me at my peril, and proven to be true in my own experience. It is not something that can be seen in statistics. There will be a drop but by nowhere near as much in prime areas as in other areas.
offer 230K and a 10 dollar coupon to bennigans.
We saw this house over the summer the same day as we saw a fully renovated home on Marlborough (that incidentally sold in a week). This house was not bad, and it is located just north of Cortelyou, which is really nice. I agree with the previous poster that the renovating was not that high-end. Still, it was clean, with new floors, new paint, and new bathrooms on the 2nd and 3rd floor. But there does remain a lot to do. They had a half-finished kitchen, which was very small at that, and no bathroom on the first floor. The entire front porch needs to be fixed (the wood is chipping away), and the garage in the back needs to be completely replaced. Additionally, the backyard needs work, in that the buyer would most likely want to put some kind of porch/balcony there. And who knows about the roof? Unfortunately for the sellers, in this market and given how much work still has to be done, I’d be shocked if they got even a million for it.
Yea, it was 1,180,000 up until a couple weeks ago. We were very interested in it back in September but couldn’t reach a deal. It’s a cute house with lots of space, but not really a high end renovation. The kitchen is new, but wasn’t finished when we saw it. The 2nd floor bathroom has a new vanity, but otherwise wasn’t renovated. They did add a 2nd bathroom to the house on the third floor. The other big plus was that they have updated the mechanicals. All in all, a nice house that you could move right into, but you’d probably still want to make some updates over time.