Open House Picks

Sorry to hear that 1:41.

I hope you have a really good health plan or French or Canadian citizenship or a death wish. You couldn’t pay me to live in that neighborhood. Nothing is worth having your first child born with their lungs on the outside or, if they’re lucky, as a flipper baby.

The neighborhood may have changed in 10 years, but not the halflife of the chemicals seeping into the water supply there.

Too bad you didn’t buy in Bed Stuy only 5 years ago for $200K. My neighbor did… and the house next door (same layout, size, etc.) went for $750K a year ago.

Erin, thank you too for that map. Very helpful information. I’m just catching up with the recent posts.

I, too, was shocked to see the Beadel St. house on the market. I know a broker and an agent who were trying to work that house, and while there is no argument at all that that is a wonderful block – houses in great shape, residents warm and neighborly – forget the oil spill. Everyone likes to forget Greenpoint’s intense industrial history. Frankly, I think that the oil spill is the least of your worries in that location. It’s not that far from that block on Apollo Street with all those instances of rare cancer.
I’m not trying to be a fearmonger, or blame everything on Exxon – I think there is a lot of leftover god knows what in the soil in that area of Greenpoint that people like to forget about.

Besides that, as other posters have mentioned, you are boxed in by the BQE, the truck route on Vandervoort (I used to take that route to get to Bushwick, and stopped after I almost got hit by a truck), and the gas facility. There is NOTHING within walking distance. Maybe a bodega on Meeker. I wouldn’t even pretend to say this is anywhere near a subway. You could walk to the B48.
But there is no way I’d live here at any price. And my friend who had the listing two years ago ran into the same problems. Buyers would take one look at the map and run screaming, or the ones who were dumb enough to look at the price and not the map wouldn’t even bother to show for the appointment. Most of them would call from several blocks away and cancel.

6:53-

I’d call 1.5M for a house that great a good deal – 1.25M would be a bargain.

Besides, to play devil’s advocate, it’s not like anything just off 4th Ave isn’t also “transitional”. Sure the Park Slope house boasts the modern conveniences of being close to U-Haul and Pep Boys and having the pedigree of being called “Park Slope (it wouldn’t have bee called that a few years ago), but it sure is waaaaay at the bottom of the slope.

I’d much rather pay $200k more for over double the space in a house with gobs of details than a house on the fringes of a nice area. Kind of like buying a Porsche keychain if you can’t afford the Porsche isn’t better than buying the Honda.

Besides, look at the other sales for Stuy Heights – didn’t 311 Stuyvesant go for something around $825?

Still, the Beadle St. house isn’t just a bad deal – it’s suicide (literally). Money can’t buy health.

I say Stuy Heights should sell for 899K.

Tops.

Buying in a transitional neighborhood is too risky these days unless you get a bargain.