House of the Day: 297 Vanderbilt Avenue
The four-story brownstone at 297 Vanderbilt Avenue was on the market for a while in 2007, but never sold. That might have had something to do with the asking price at the time, which started at $2,000,000 and dropped to $1,800,000 before begin pulled off the market. The odds are looking must better now for…
The four-story brownstone at 297 Vanderbilt Avenue was on the market for a while in 2007, but never sold. That might have had something to do with the asking price at the time, which started at $2,000,000 and dropped to $1,800,000 before begin pulled off the market. The odds are looking must better now for the two-family house: It just hit the market asking $1,495,000. Seems pretty reasonable to us for a classic brownstone in this location with all of its original details intact. Agree?
297 Vanderbilt Avenue [Douglas Elliman] GMAP P*Shark
The house is definitely not in shambles. New gas heating, strong staircase, very nice detail, historic light fixtures. The current furniture does not help envisioning it as a bright airy home. It is narrow, there are no windows facing North despite the fact that there is no property preventing it, and the layout is plain weird. The tenant still has one year on his lease, so that is another issue. The deck is old and needs some TLC. Cheap closets, bad kitchen, and the bathrooms need some work.
Overall, not as nice as 202 Clermont, definitely not moving condition, so I think it will sell for less, unless someone falls in love with it.
minard lafever is correct that brownstone was out of fashion after the Columbian Exposition,but there are plenty of 1899 brownstones on my block, built alongside limestones, by the same builder (W.A.A. Brown). There are also many brownstones in PLG built as late as c.1910. Some people had conservative taste.
Prices on this block have gone up at roughly 10.5%/year over the past 30 years. They went up at roughly 1.5%/year over the preceding 120 years.
In 1980, this house was worth about 10-12 decent pickup trucks. Today it is priced at 40 pickup trucks.
Even adjusting for the huge drop in interest rates (9% drop) the total return on this house is north of 8%/year over the last 30 years. This is a crazy return for a pile of bricks.
This house is roughly the same size as the average American house, but is priced at 6-7x the average price.
The average household income on the block is not all that high — perhaps 150k. This puts the house at 8-9x incomes.
You would have trouble getting more than 2200 for the ground floor rental; the top floors would be worth less.
Conclusion: Likely to lag inflation for quite some time.
DIBS, isn’t some context helpful here? This was a historic bubble in RE. Why is past performance any guide? You sound like a “Stocks for the Long Run” guru when Naz was at 5000; saying things that are true, but beside the point. OK, the guv wants to reflate, at any cost; and so maybe taking on massive debt is a fine idea, as the dollars you pay it back with get cheaper and cheaper. Or maybe the guv isn’t to be trusted, in intent or competence, and if they flub this, you, new mortgage taker, could be a major bagholder. Why be SO sure buying a house is a no brainer? It makes you sound like you’re only talking your book (surely you don’t have our best interests in mind) and slightly hysterical, at that.
MFN, I saw it in April or May, the price was 1,395 then they reduced to 1,295 the following month or so. It still needed work (esp. in the garden rental), but nothing that couldn’t haven’t been polished beautifully with $100,000 and lots of elbow grease.
I actually really liked the block, on the edge of carriage houses. But! I thought the house lacked charm and for that price I wasn’t looking to live in a construction site for 3 months+. For under a million I would put up with it. Maybe.
“Will the right place even be on the market then??”
Absolute bottom is hard to call–you will know you are near by the discussions here, no bitter renters. But as mfn said plenty of time.
Also whenever I thought this is the right place another one came which felt more appropriate.
Excuse me, pardon me, psst Snark, we need you in the OT.
“You can only know that after they start rising so, by definition, you will have missed hte bottom. ”
However, houses are not small cap stocks. You’re not likely to lose a lot of upside potential by being 2-3 months behind the eventual upturn.
And since a double-dip reduction in prices is highly unlikely, you definitely have far more risk in going in too early in a downward market, since the bottom could be months and months away before the slow, eventual uptick.
MFN…I think you’re right on that place. Unless we’re talking a very special place in Ft Greene (of which there are quite a number), an ordinary brownstone is really going to top out at $1.2-1.4 max in the current market.