Last Week's Biggest Sales
1. BROOKLYN HEIGHTS $3,050,000 45 State Street GMAP (left) This house was purchased by a developer a few years ago and then marketed for $4,250,000 in ’08; by the time it was an Open House Pick this May, it was listed for $3,900,000. Entered into contract on 6/25/09; closed on 8/20/09; deed recorded on 9/1/09….
1. BROOKLYN HEIGHTS $3,050,000
45 State Street GMAP (left)
This house was purchased by a developer a few years ago and then marketed for $4,250,000 in ’08; by the time it was an Open House Pick this May, it was listed for $3,900,000. Entered into contract on 6/25/09; closed on 8/20/09; deed recorded on 9/1/09.
2. PROSPECT HEIGHTS $2,300,000
On Prospect Park, Unit 10E GMAP (right)
This is an 1,825-sf, 3-bedroom unit in the Meier-designed condo, according to StreetEasy. Entered into contract on 12/17/07; closed on 8/27/09; deed recorded on 9/4/09.
3. BOERUM HILL $1,800,000
291 State Street GMAP
This four-story brownstone was a House of the Day twice: First in November ’08, when it was listed for $2,250,000, and then in January ’09, when the price had come down a touch, to $2,100,000. Entered into contract on 6/11/09; closed on 8/27/09; deed recorded on 9/2/09.
4. CARROLL GARDENS $1,690,000
6 3rd Street GMAP
The last ask on this 4-story townhouse was $1,895,000 late last year, according to StreetEasy. Entered into contract on 5/8/09; closed on 7/24/09; deed recorded on 9/4/09.
5. GOWANUS $1,650,500
162 Douglass Street GMAP
This renovated townhouse was listed for $1,825,000 in April, according to StreetEasy. Entered into contract on 6/22/09; closed on 8/20/09; deed recorded on 9/2/09.
State Street pic from StateandHicks.
The buyers of 6 3rd street in Carroll Gardens are friggin morons. They bought it from a flipper who paid 975K for the house at the height of the housing bubble and a month before the crash of Lehman, in August of 2008. The flipper then put it on the market 4 months later at a listed price of $1.895 mil, an increase of 94%? How much work could have been put into the house in just 4 months? At $1.69mil, I can’t fathom how you could pay 715K above the price paid at the top peak point of the real estate bubble, even including the price for renovations put in. The old adage ” A fool and his money shall soon part ways” holds true again.
Invisible:
There have been a lot more than a “few shootings” in neighborhoods like Bed Stuy and Crown Heights in the past year…both neighborhoods that people on this board talk all the time about how it’s a great place to call home.
I don’t believe there have been any murders in those Gowanus projects this year, which is more than I can say for the 2 neighborhoods I just mentioned.
There are many “yuppies” as you saying living in Boreum Hill near these projects and love it. It’s a fantastic URBAN neighborhood. Probably more prototypical urban neighborhood than many of the other neighborhoods we talk about on this board regularly.
I hope you are wrong and I hope these new owners are very happy in their new home for a long time to come.
the gowanus houses had only a few shootings and a few armed robberies in the surroundings over the past year. could be worse, but its not exactly a place i’d call home. bet it will be back on the market in 5 years or less. that shit will wear a proud liberal yuppie hypocrite down fast enough. i’d advise renting across from a project for a few years to see if you still have the balls to plop down 1.7 mil. the cops won’t exactly be racing to your house like you’re living on the UWS. l am i wrong or were there no bars on the windows?
wine lover — I don’t think that PS 32 has exceptionally low scores. (This link supposedly has the latest report on proficiency reviews of grades 3-5: http://www.greatschools.net/modperl/achievement/ny/2128#nytest) Certainly, it gets realtively high rankings on insideschools.
The biggest problem I have heard about the school are more that its facilities are kind of crappy. I actually hear more complaints about PS 38, which serves more of Boerum Hill.
Admittedly, PS 32 test scores are lower than PS 38, 261 or 58, so there is cause for concern. OTOH, there is the quasi-mainstreaming of ASD kids at the school, and I don’t know how the score reports account for children with disabilities.
WELL… 11217 – you are only thinking your personal safety. have to think schools too when it comes to property values. right or wrong, parents are not going to want to send their kids to a school with low scores, and unfortunately, that tends to go hand in hand with low income kids. upper middle class parents don’t want to risk their kids being slowed down by underpreforming kids.
11217:
That these PJs are “no less ugly than the Clinton Hill Co-ops or the Co-ops over on Congress Street in Cobble Hill” doesn’t mean that these PJs aren’t ugly. Simply put, these PJs are ugly!
And I don’t think that “2 blocks from Park Slope’s 5th Avenue and 2 blocks to Smith Street” qualifies as “no lack of services,” but maybe I’m just being lazy, and I should walk more. These PJs are in a very good ‘hood, even if the services directly bordering them are sub-par.
I think your point about not lumping all projects together is a very good one. And I’m most convinced by your point that “if the projects were worse, I doubt [the home facing them would] get a price like that.”
Antidope — No reliable block-by-block analysis, just my gut feel on where the market is for a seller to find a buyer in a reasonable amount of time (<3 months).
For example, I thought the 291 State Street place would sell for $1.6 to 1.8 M (see the HOTD thread) based on comps of houses across the street that sold in that time frame. It seems like it took a long time for the right buyer to come in with a price in that range and for the seller to take it. Or, the other possibility is that by waiting for so many months the sellers finally found a buyer at the higher end.
Brownlime:
And my point was more specific than yours because the projects near the house in question are in fact not high crime anymore, are no less ugly than the Clinton Hill Co-ops or the Co-ops over on Congress Street in Cobble Hill, and in fact the grounds at the complex are nearly immaculate. Green, trees, flowers, the whole bit.
These particular projects are 2 blocks from Park Slope’s 5th Avenue and 2 blocks to Smith Street…no lack of services either. They are low-income housing. That’s all.
I’m not trying to paint them as the picture of perfection, but all projects can’t be lumped together. These used to be bad and are not any longer. They’ve been cleaned up enormously. For that reason, people pay prices like the one above. If the projects were worse, I doubt they’d get a price like that.
Sometimes I think the Pj’s (these in particular) would make better neighbors than some of my entitled, whiny, rich neighbors.
I asked “Why would anyone pay that much (1.65 M) to live across the street from PJs (projects)?”
The response was, in part, “I guess there are those who don’t like the diversity.”
That response missed my point.
I like diversity.
My point is:
PJs are high-crime (even if you haven’t been mugged there, they are nevertheless high-crime).
Most PJs (including this one) are architecturally very ugly.
PJs are very often poorly maintained.
The services around PJs are often lower than the population density warrants.
In sum, PJs make poor neighbors.