House of the Day: A Gutted and Renovated Brownstone in Ocean Hill

This Ocean Hill townhouse, at 720 Decatur Street, is one of several better-than-average flips to recently become available in the neighborhood. It and others nearby could be viewed as something of a test case for prices in this section of Ocean Hill, where the sounds of building and rehabbing are getting loud enough to drown out passing trains on the elevated J tracks.

The parlor floor is open plan, with an attractive kitchen in the rear, boasting floor-to-ceiling windows and a door that opens onto a terrace. The living room has one of those flat-screen-style built-in fireplaces that look as much like a place to watch a video of a fire as light one. This floor has a half-bath — and there’s another in the cellar (!).

The listing references “some original details,” though it’s hard to see from the photos what that might be. With the exception of the recently painted and spruced-up brownstone facade, everything within view appears to have been recently created by a carpenter.

The three-story, 18-foot-wide house is set up as a two-family, with a compact two-bedroom unit on the garden level and a duplex above. The duplex has three bedrooms and two baths; there’s a walk-in closet off the master bedroom.

The grassy backyard has a stately tree in the rear and the all-important horizontal fence.

The listing is held by Compass brokers Dan Bentov, Adam Sikorski and mTkalla Keaton. (Incidentally, if you’ve been keeping up with your reading, you may remember mTkalla stars in the opening chapter of the recently published book, “The Edge Becomes the Center, an Oral History of Gentrification in the 21st Century,” by DW Gibson.)

But back to the house. Pre-renovation, it traded in August for $605,000. The new ask is $1,499,000. Do you think they will get it?

720 Decatur Street [Compass] GMAP