Houses of the Day: Head-to-Head on Clinton Street
Two owners within two blocks of each other on Clinton Street in Cobble Hill have decided to put their houses on the market at the same time for almost exactly the same price. Number 274 (left), which is listed with Brown Harris Stevens for $2,900,000, is a 3,600-square-foot three-family that has been in the same…
Two owners within two blocks of each other on Clinton Street in Cobble Hill have decided to put their houses on the market at the same time for almost exactly the same price. Number 274 (left), which is listed with Brown Harris Stevens for $2,900,000, is a 3,600-square-foot three-family that has been in the same family for six decades. Number 299 (right), listed with Halstead for $2,895,000, is smaller at about 3,000 square feet but has a corner location with a parking garage taking up most of the rear yard. Both houses are brownstone and both houses have only 68-feet-deep lots. The corner property has been recently renovated and most likely has higher taxes. Tough call. Which would you buy if you had this kind of dough to drop?
274 Clinton Street [Brown Harris Stevens] GMAP P*Shark
299 Clinton Street [Halstead] GMAP P*Shark
People will sell “so soon” for lots of reasons, 9:13 am. Life has lots of surprises. A $600K profit (less, minus various fees) over two years on a $2 million + property that’s been renovated is totally normal in Brooklyn. As for the brownstone siding, nobody should believe gossip on a website about the condition of a property, in place of having an engineer inspect it. I don’t want to sound snarkey, but it does sound a tad like you’re an interested buyer trying to dissuade others from bidding on this house. Just saying.
Well sure, because more space is worth more. Any 4-story house has more square footage. It’s not that 2-family houses are not valuable. If it’s a 3-story house then it should only be a 2-family house. As a 3-family house it would not offer an owner’s duplex and would be less appealing.
3-families in most neighborhoods are worth more than 2-families on average. in Bed-Stuy where I live, if you have 4 floors and rent out 2 apartments in your 3-family, it will cover at least half of the purchase price if not more. Then you can live on 2 nice roomy fabulous floors and feel like a king or queen, or a very lucky person.
That corner house sold a mere two years ago for something like 2.2. why would people be selling so soon? with mansion tax, broker’s fee, etc., they’re not making money.
also, i know an architect who claims the brownstone (?) applied to the exterior was done when it was too cold and therefore won’t last. don’t know if that’s true. Just passing it on…
Again, Anoon 7:57 am, buying “several years ago” changes everything. We bought “several years ago” also — a 3-family — and paid well under $1 million. So it was a no-brainer as an investment. Now, our house would sell for 3 times that, but the rents have gone up perhaps 20%, if that. If you are lucky, you can get $2,300 a floor x 3 floors is $6,900. So perhaps that covers 1.15 million of mortgage, but no taxes, and other maintenance costs. So to make this a good investment, you have to put 2 million in cash down. If you have 2 million cash, there are much better investments to be made than this. So, please, tell us how your rents cover your mortgage now. You must have purchased your property for half the cost of this one. Rents were very flat in this neighborhood for quite a few years, and only recently increased, so I don’t see how the rents you receive have gone from barely helping with the mortgage to completely covering it. You’d have to provide more specifics to convince me of that, since we have the same situation, and our rents have gone from covering more than half, to now covering more than 3/4. But if I bought this property, the rents would leave me paying thousands and thousands of dollars in mortgage that I don’t have.
I own a 3 family on Cobble Hill that I bought several years ago. When I closed the rents helped with the mortgage but barely. Now they cover the mortgage and I am not even getting market rate (great tenants so why raise the rents). In 5 years I expect the rents to go even higher though I will still charge less then market for great tenants.
Anonymous 7:35pm you are absolutely right, and people that say I’d rather have a 3 or 4 family are completely missing your point. We also have a 3 family in this neighborhood, but we bought for a price when the rental income covered a huge percentage of the mortgage. Now it covers 1/2 to 1/3. I’d like to challenge Anon. 6:06pm and 8:36 pm to exactly what he or she would put down, and what kind of income they expect, in order to make this a good investment. Otherwise, you are paying $6,000 in mortgage, plus other expenses, to live in a floor of a brownstone you can rent for one third that amount.
I would rather buy a $ family over a 2 any day even if i live in 2 bedrooms. Give me the income and call it what you will.
i’m not anti 3 or 4 family, just anti 3 or 4 fam for 3 million plus. even if you have lots of equity it’s still hard to buy a 3 million dollar house if you don’t have the income to support it. banks will lend about 75% of the value on a straight investment basis assuming the purchaser has good liquid assets and high income. owner occupied a bank will lend 80% to 95% depending on how aggressive the lender and how qualified the purchaser. my point is it’s naive to think that if you have $500k down and can afford a $1 million dollar mortgage a bank will loan you $2.5 mill. if you can only afford a 1 million a bank won’t lend an additional $1.5 million no matter how good the rental situation. owning 3 and 4 families is great, i know plenty of people in cobble hill that have owned them for 20 plus years and now get $2300 a month per renovated floor. they’re making a killing. but even if you expect those very high rent to increase (remember in most layouts you only get a 1 bed with study/jr bedroom) it’s still not enough to justify a 3 million price tag. that is why brokers market these as conversions to 1 or 2 families or condos. buying a 4 family for $1.5 million as an investment doesn’t even make sense unless you put 30% or more down