Houses of the Day: The Ugly Stepchild Problem
It’s a rich man’s problem, but when a broker has a lot of listings, the risk is that one can make another look pretty bad by comparison. Such is the case with two townhouse listings of Elliman power broker Kathryn Lilly. She recently got the listing for a house at 211 Carlton Avenue which is…
It’s a rich man’s problem, but when a broker has a lot of listings, the risk is that one can make another look pretty bad by comparison. Such is the case with two townhouse listings of Elliman power broker Kathryn Lilly. She recently got the listing for a house at 211 Carlton Avenue which is a classic brownstone (except for the stoop alteration) in a good Fort Greene location. The house traded for $1,580,000 in October 2006 so the current asking price of $2,650,000 may be a bit aggressive even though it appears that the owner’s doing a pretty extensive reno. Aggressive maybe, but not completely insane, like Lilly’s other listing at 171 Greene Avenue. We’ve written several posts over the last year about the owner’s fruitless efforts to sell off this place as three condos at exorbitant prices, so when we heard that he had changed tactics and put the whole house on the market we thought that maybe he’d come to his senses. Apparently not. The asking price, at a whopping $2.5 million, is just as high as he was asking for the three units collectively. This place is overpriced by a good $1 million in our opinion. So now Lilly has the awkward problem of having two houses priced about the same, one an original brownstone a block from Fort Greene Park, the other a recently constructed house on a heavily trafficed portion of Greene Avenue in Clinton Hill. We’re not sure how she’s supposed to sell the latter with a straight face. Brokers, how do you handle a situation like this?
211 Carlton Avenue [Elliman] GMAP P*Shark
171 Greene Avenue [Elliman] GMAP P*Shark
What’s up with the plywood in the windows on Carlton? Or maybe it’s brazilian Ipe, which would help explain the price jump.
how does the broker cope with this situation? puffery, of course!
this also reminds me of a similar situation, but from the seller’s point of view: hooking up with a broker who sells multi-million dollar units, when yours is, say, a paltry $500k, and the mega-money broker lists yours at $400k to sell quick and get back to her more lucrative brownstones. score another point for FSBO.
My husband and I are ready to kick ourselves in the collective butt for quibbling over $25K – we offered 835K for one of these Clinton Hill town homes and the agent said the owner was not willing to go below 860K. this was about 3 1/2 years ago. What a killing we could’ve made. Not crazy about the nabe though.
makes the 2.7 million house at 227 berkeley place, profiled yesterday look like a steal.
even with the tenant issue.
what is so great about brownstones. up $1 Million in leas than a year and that may be aggressive. People are crazy if they buy that at that price. The second one, let it languish for 5 more years when he can sell it for 750K (if that) after the crash. Shitty neighborhoods filled with minorities will not fare well when the market crashes.
Love the Carlton address — def one of the best blocks in FG/CH area.
But come on, a listing that boasts of all this great plaster work and marble, and not a single photo of the interior?
As for the other place on Greed, I mean Greene, ha ha ha haaa aaa ha haaha.
early-90’s construction…it’s all relative
That’s new construction? Pretty damn good job.
2.6 million for the renovated ft greene flip is ridiculous when you can get the 5 story (larger) and more beautiful brownstone for 2.5, that was noted here last week.