House of the Day: 291 8th Street
This house at 291 8th Street in Park Slope is a bit unusual in that it as a legal commercial space in the ground floor. We like the looks of the ground-floor space, which is fully built out on the lot and has a bunch of nice skylights installed. The renovation on the rest of…

This house at 291 8th Street in Park Slope is a bit unusual in that it as a legal commercial space in the ground floor. We like the looks of the ground-floor space, which is fully built out on the lot and has a bunch of nice skylights installed. The renovation on the rest of the house, while thorough, isn’t really floating our boat. In particular, all the light colored wood trim looks out of place to us. But that’s easily fixable as is, we imagine, the asking price of $2,100,000, which seems quite high unless the rent on that commercial space is potentially much higher than we would imagine. Thoughts?
291 8th Street [Douglas Elliman] GMAP P*Shark
That’s very tall for the garden floor — 14″. How did they manage that?
“$3500 a month would only cover about 1/3 of your monthly costs. Really? Why would anyone even entertain this price. Or really, anything over a million. Folks have thrown out any rational thought in this town. If it doesn’t make business sense, don’t buy it! Why is that such a hard concept?!” (tybur6)
No one’s buying it . . .
a quirky weird layout that should be very cheap.
but there are weird quirky rich people out there who may think this is just the ticket. But they probably would not overpay either.
how many sq feet is this place? property shark says 1,400 sq feet. 2.1mil for 1,400 sq feet sounds very high.
You can find a much better house in this neighborhood for this price.
$3500 a month would only cover about 1/3 of your monthly costs. Really? Why would anyone even entertain this price. Or really, anything over a million. Folks have thrown out any rational thought in this town. If it doesn’t make business sense, don’t buy it! Why is that such a hard concept?!
The long time on the market is no mystery:
1) The price is way too high
2) The weird the configuration severely limits the pool of potential buyers.
As one of the bloggers noted, this property has been on the market at least a year; better bet is this property has been on the market for close to three years. Probably greater than a year with this broker. I guess the attitude is hold a listing that will not move rather lose a townhouse listing. Are there ever any open houses for this property? Only know about it through word of mouth. Never really see it advertised – except for on brownstoner. Perhaps a new marketing approach and a price adjustment might eventually to the trick; or, do nothing and the owner will eventually figure it out.
The agent said that the commercial rent would depend on the use, but a ballpark of $3,500 doesn’t seem that much more than what you could get as a residential rental. $1.5-1.6 seems much more on point.
I think the problem with this one is that you give up 1,400 square feet or so to the rental, and a big chunk of the 3,850 square footage left is a deck that isn’t much use when it’s raining or cold.