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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


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  1. Aussie – what about people who decide to downsize in this climate? So, yeah, you may sell your big house cheaper but you can also buy a smaller apartment cheaper too. Maybe some people, during the good times, thought they could afford a lot more square footage and are now re-evaluating that and trying to make do with less. So many people I know are in nervous mode, wondering if they are going to lose their jobs, and trying to reduce their expenses. Housing is probably the biggest household budget item so maybe it makes sense that some people would decide to just move to smaller quarters?

  2. I wonder why they have to sell. It may have been an investment rather than a home.

    Why sell your home if you just have to buy another one? Percentage wise most people that HAVE to sell wont be in prime areas. I’m not sure that I regard this as prime.
    Most people won’t lose their jobs, get divorced or run into the sort of big financial difficulties that cause the sale of a home. A small percentage of them will. If unemployment rises to 8.5%, 3% more people won’t have a job. This will definitely move the market a bit but not a lot.

    Different scenario in areas where there was a lot of leveraged speculation.

  3. Wow, that’s a bummer for these sellers then, since they will almost certainly lose money after fees. Unfortunately, I think there will be more and more people in that situation. I truly hope most sellers during this period will be folks who bought earlier and so won’t suffer real losses.

  4. This money pit will sell for $650k about the same time that Park Slope Brownstones go back to selling for $1mil instead of $2mil. (And the way things are going, you never know)

    In the comments from the post when the house sold for $985k…
    “BTW, this house needed complete gut reno, had limited original detail, and no kitchen… That’s why it sold for under a million. Houses with more interesting architecture, loads of detail and recent renos sell for a whole lot more.”

    Asking $140k more than previous purchase after renovations, doesn’t sound overly aggressive, or like an extension of an upward curve – more like an attempt to break even. (Which may be tough in these times)

  5. househunt – it’s called denial. Some sellers just can’t believe the party’s over, though other are starting, slowly, to accept the new reality. That’s why you saw, in yesterday’s “last week’s biggest sales” a Park Slope house that hit market at 3.2mil and sold for nearly 1million less. If you follow market closely, you will see more and more price cuts, since any seller that’s serious pretty much has to cut price these days, sometimes drastically if they were too aggressive at first. This is all classic behavior at the end of a bubble. There is a peak, then a stand-off as sellers don’t want to accept the changed reality but buyers refuse to pay the high prices. So for a while transactions really slow down. But eventually the weakest sellers cave, other sellers start to accept new pricing levels, and new comps are established. Everyone agrees prices will readjust soon, and are just starting to.

  6. I really don’t understand the pricing of anything these days. The NYT reports housing at drop on par with 1991 and sellers/brokers are pricing as if 2008 was an extension of the upward curve. Can someone explain this insanity?!?

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