House of the Day: 135 Lafayette Avenue
This five-story, 5,810-square-foot townhouse at 135 Lafayette Avenue in Fort Greene hit the market a couple of weeks ago with a price tag of $2,875,000, unusually expensive for house not on a park block. The house has been updated in a tasteful way and looks particularly spacious in the new Corcoran full-screen photo viewer. On…
This five-story, 5,810-square-foot townhouse at 135 Lafayette Avenue in Fort Greene hit the market a couple of weeks ago with a price tag of $2,875,000, unusually expensive for house not on a park block. The house has been updated in a tasteful way and looks particularly spacious in the new Corcoran full-screen photo viewer. On the downside, it’s right next door to a less-than-scenic deli and doesn’t have much of a backyard to speak of. Reactions?
135 Lafayette Avenue [Corcoran] GMAP P*Shark
Thanks, BrooklynGreene, for bringing some sense to the senseless, ignorant comments on this post.
And might I add one of my friends was violently mugged in the East 70’s walking from Lexington to visit us on Park. It can happen anywhere.
How can you write: “I don’t see why I should spend my hard-earned money to live somewhere where I can expect to be mugged and robbed. No thank you.”???
That’s obnoxious, bordering on something I won’t mention, and, well…just gross. Not to mention rude and wrong-headed. Honestly, I guess you should live on Fifth at 79th and wear a Kevlar vest while you’re at it. That’ll be “safe”…expensive…but safe. I don’t want to mention it but violent crimes happen everywhere. Witness the news recently.
Anyway, I’ve heard of many, many muggings in Park Slope so how bad can Fort Greene be? I find Lafayette to have more people and more activity at night than many streets and avenues in Park Slope.
Fear is often wrapped up in cultural expectations so please drop the “I can expect to get mugged and robbed…” line.
So luckily, we’ll have one less potential fearful-sourpuss considering buying this house then Minard?
Don’t “think” it’s safe? Why, are you clairevoyant or do you have access to some crime meta-database? Safe–Schmafe. The door locks.
Look, if we really have to talk about it on *that* level, I’d rather live in this house than down some long side street with heavy trees and a “creepy” walk home at night.
Don’t the muggings usually happen on long blocks that are less well lit?
… The bodega’s open until 11PM 7days/week and is NOT up to any funny business. There’re always people going in and out getting ice cream (or probably more often beer) into the night. Because of this, it’s probably a safer corner than most.
Minard, I thought you were more classy and wouldn’t play your cards so obviously. Goes to show…
I don’t like this location, I don’t think it’s safe. that’s all. I don’t see why I should spend my hard-earned money to live somewhere where I can expect to be mugged and robbed. No thank you.
Kids, the person/people who want to buy this house will set the price, not the niceness of the current owner. Stop being jerky.
Look at it this way, the woodframe yellow and green house on Cumberland which was frankly rather cut up and had an odd layout for the two units sold for nearly $2m. Mr. Ruoff usually closes the deal! Anyway, it got what looks to be a huge top to bottom redo.
Okay, that got started this past year in 2008…but you have to remember, somebody may pay “good money” for this house (huge amount of square footage) and put some serious money into it too…just like many townhouses in the neighborhood that have sold for what-seemed-like a lot of money to begin with …and yes, post-Lehman. There are a number of renovations going on blocks in and around the house of the day.
Okay, I’ll really shut up now.
Goodnight.
Uh huh… and? He bought it when it was an SOR which has lots of semi-hidden costs, one of which was requirement it sit empty for years to meet the SOR moratorium guidelines. There’s a cost to that. Plus, if I remember, the actually purchase must have been in 1990 what has inflation been over nearly two decades not even considering the run-up in real estate? Plus, he was the architect and was able to save a mint so, if you saw that he spent $300K in the NY Times article, it probably does not include an estimate of what his services would have cost the normal homeowner. As I remember, he did a lot more than a regular architect would so you can add that in as a premium…probably helped him save on the costs of the renovations in many, many ways.
I wish we had some good accountants (I mean *good*) on this blog who could figure all this out: no matter what, I’m sure the purchase price, renovations, lost professional earnings (by the architect concentrating on his own home), legal fees and SOR multi-year empty-house requirement with all inflation worked in would change the picture. Heck, if I wrote what we paid for our house many of you would most probably comment “I almost spit up my latte!”
…Plus, Brooklynplebe, while I’m browbeating you, you probably wouldn’t have come to Fort Greene in 1990 unless you were going to school at Brooklyn Tech or stuck at Pratt. Let’s just say the neighborhood has changed to “something else”…something with a Smooch, a Madiba, a Habana Outpost, a Green Grasp I and II, a Brooklyn Flea, film crews shooting HBO mini-series, a Connecticut Muffin, a Marquet, a soon-to-be Greenlight Bookstore, a Schwarze Koelner, a farmers’ market, and on and on and on: Irondale, 80 Arts, Night of the Cookers, Cakeman Raven, Scopella, Crunch, Rice, Ici, Brooklyn Public House, Kif, Olea…shall I go on?
There are many, many houses/apartments in Manhattan that at the time cost less than $500,000 but would most probably sell for more than this house will eventually sell for. We almost bought a townhouse in Chelsea…and I could kick myself now…but who knew?…and anyway, I would have hated it–but this is just one of many examples.
Look, Park Slope has changed a lot since 1990, okay, but it was already “Park Slope”. Fort Greene was either completely under (off?) the radar or completely dismissed (feared?) by many 20 years ago or so when the current ownder bought this SOR townhouse. That’s where the premium comes from, that and the fact you have every subway and the LIRR two steps away…or as the real estate ads say: “Steps from Everythng!”. Basically with a couple of steps I’ve ended up on Shelter Island never having sat in a car or taken a subway. That’s Fort Greene these days. Sorry for the news.
Phew, this lady’s on fire tonight!
By the way if you refuse to buy an overpriced building you are a bitter renter. If you are selling said overpriced building you are just nice.
Minard you’ve made a lot sense and you are right this building is overpriced by at least $500K but calling 135 Lafayette “rough” is well misinformed or plain ignorant of city neighborhoods. What is prime Forte Greene if this isn’t?
Money for nothing
actually you are not priced out of this market. Who do you think bought during the bubble?
You can afford those brownstones with your income but you must be a landlord with a negative cash flow compensating with perhaps 50% of your aftertax income thereby becoming poor and fool.