Open House Picks
Park Slope 398 Bergen Street FKG Real Estate Sunday 1-3 $1,875,000 GMAP P*Shark Park Slope 99 St. Marks Place Aguayo & Huebener Sunday 1-3 $1,595,000 GMAP P*Shark Bedford Stuyvesant 119 Bainbridge Street Brooklyn Properties Sunday 12-2 $1,300,000 GMAP P*Shark Crown Heights 1190 Dean Street Brown Harris Stevens Sunday 12-1:30 $985,000 GMAP P*Shark
Park Slope
398 Bergen Street
FKG Real Estate
Sunday 1-3
$1,875,000
GMAP P*Shark
Park Slope
99 St. Marks Place
Aguayo & Huebener
Sunday 1-3
$1,595,000
GMAP P*Shark
Bedford Stuyvesant
119 Bainbridge Street
Brooklyn Properties
Sunday 12-2
$1,300,000
GMAP P*Shark
Crown Heights
1190 Dean Street
Brown Harris Stevens
Sunday 12-1:30
$985,000
GMAP P*Shark
7:06 – to clarify… I never said that I would buy an overpriced house in CH or anywhere else just to either boost my neighborhood up, or as an investment. I will be the first to say that I think too many of the prices in our neighborhoods are too high. The services in the neighborhood can’t support it, and prices like that prevent the children of people who already live here from staying. They also keep those people mentioned by others earlier – young professionals, and middle class folks from buying. I don’t want CH to be an enclave of rich people hiding in their expensive homes afraid to come out into a poor neighborhood. That does absolutely no one no good.
I want people to be able to afford to settle down here for the long haul. I want people to join civic organizations, churches, block associations and become neighbors and friends. Like in any other brownstone neighborhood, people should be able to live in a home, and have a couple of tenants to help them pay the mortgage, if that’s what they need or choose to do. That’s the only reason I can afford my house. I said I would invest in more houses if I could because people always need a place to live, no matter what happens in the economy, and I have no problem buying a fixer upper and working on it, buying something at a reasonable price. I’m old school, real estate is an excellent long term investment. If I ever move from my house, it will be to a better one in Crown Heights, no matter how successful I become. This is a great neighborhood, and I believe it will only improve. Like I said, if that makes me a dreamer and a fool, then so be it.
Crown Heights is the Cinderella of brooklyn…And she’s
coming to the ball.
More interesting posts here (thanks 8:16/8:29), but it doesn’t completely describe my situation or that of some of the new residents in the area. I’m caucasian and a wall streeter (if that matters), recently moved to BedStuy because of the phenomenal quality brownstones in the area, the proximity to work, the affordabilty, lowered crime rate, and the people who live here. Affordability may shock a few, but lets face it for $300/sf you can buy what would cost you $1200-1500/sf in manhattan (a 10-15min commute away). Not the same services, fully granted, but that’s changing. More to come with the new rezoning of the area currently under review by the city commission with no real oppositions and the billions in investments coming along Flatbush & Atlantic which is only a subway station away on the A-train. Another part that many won’t be accustomed to from spending years in manhatten, is the friendliness and neighborhood feel. I’ve been here less than 1 year, but most residents on the block have welcomed me to the area. Now if prices start coming down, I’m not going anywhere. I might if crime becomes an issue, but with operation impact and local merchants seeking to better the area via a BID next year I don’t expect a reversal anytime soon. Bottom line is that what is appealing to some, may not be to others and I respect that. But to assume that this area will go downhill in this next phase of the real estate market is, in my humble opinion, a big mistake.
8:16 & 8:29 – Your logic makes sense, but I think you rmath is a littel wrong.
My family income is around $150 – $170 and we comfortably bought a $600K duplex condo in south slope. We are young professionals and our income in rising gradually. We will be staying in our home for numerous years and as our income grows our mortgage will stay the same.
I think the assumption that you need to make $300 or $400 a year to afford something that is $800 or $1 mil is little off, and these people are also going to collect rent which will also rise in these areas.
It seems like you are trying to say that only rich people are buying in these locations and one day they are going to realize that their investment isnt paying off and there will be a mass exodus return the neighborhood urban Blithe.
Dont really see that as happening because incomes rise over time, and people spend their rising disposable income in the neighborhoods and improve them.
Just my 2 cents.
to go a little further on your post, 8:16…there are a lot of us that have decided to buy smaller places in park slope or other more gentrified areas. i am one of the said young, creative types with a moderate salary and probably would consider a move to one of these fringe areas if i could buy a small fixer upper on my budget of around 300K. that’s not possible and so i’ve decided to buy a studio in park slope. i wouldn’t mind being more of a pioneer, but i’ve already been priced out of the less desireable neighborhoods.
now…i’m completely and totally happy in park slope…i love it in fact…but given the opportunity to own a house or part of one, and could really invest in a neighborhood and try to make some improvements is simply out of reach for me and my peers.
the people moving into these neighborhoods now make a ton of money and many of them seem unwilling or simply are not the type to really get their hands dirty like so many did back in the day in park slope.
so by leaving out the middle class in this process, it has created a very strange dynamic.
people say all the time that park slope is nothing but wealth. that simply isn’t true, but a lot of us just have decided to settle in on much smaller spaces to get the dream we want of living in this wonderful world of brownstones.
i feel lucky to have my place at all, but i can just see it becoming more and more a problem in these fringe neighborhoods.
people are impatient these days…more and more everyday…if crown heights and bed stuy don’t start to resemble park slope (influc of shops, restaurants, etc) in the next couple years, i do believe a lot of the recent tranplants will downsize to one of the more desirable areas.
i could be wrong, of course, but that’s my opinion.
8:16, great post. You nailed it.
exactly, 8:16 and the things is…and this is an overgeneralization, but a lot of those people moving into these neighborhoods making 300, 400K a year…i have to assume they know a thing or two about money and how to make it.
they will be horrified to find out in 5 years…let’s say best case scenario hasn’t even depreciated all that much, but even stayed relatively flat.
those people are going to start to look elsewhere, because one has to assume that they bought hoping the neighborhood would improve, thuse more rapidly appreciate their homes. if this doesn’t happen quickly in the next couple years, these people will see no further reason to continue raising their families in these fringe, somewhat less desireable places with no hope of a future windfall.
it’s just human nature and it makes financial sense as we all have pretty much agreed that while people are looking for homes, they also, in many ways look at their homes as investments in their financial futures.
you’d be terrified and not probably all that suprised to find out how many people with these high incomes have little to no savings and have sunk most of their money in on these homes hoping that they’ll pay for their retirement.
while some people who bought year ago might be able to reap that benefit from this latest record housing bubble, i don’t think we are going to see another run up in prices like this for perhaps another 15-20 years or so.
people are too fearful of it now. i think people in general across the country would like to keep home appreciation in check so we don’t have another repeat of what’s going on now where home prices have become so out of sync with incomes.
I have a friend who bought a house in prime south slope, between 7th and 8th Ave. for well under $250,000 around 1993.
At the time, the neighborhood was very nice, full of post-college grads renting, but not the yuppie family enclave it came to be. There were tons of restaurants on 7th Ave., so-so schools (but schools okay enough to take a chance on to improve), and not that many people clamoring for brownstones. So lots of regular, professional people (NOT hippies) who had normal paying good jobs could actually buy space to raise a family.
What bothers me most about the run up in Crown Heights and Bed Stuy is that these house are NOT affordable for most people. A typical professional family may have an income of $200,000. Maybe if you stretch you buy a $500,000 house for that, and if Crown Heights/Bed Stuy want to improve, they should have a huge number of homes for $400,000 – $500,000. But they are already priced only for rich people. And THAT doesn’t make sense to me. What kind of income do you think a family needs to make to buy a million dollar home anyway? You should be making $300,000 – $400,000/year to buy that home (and that’s probably even a stretch).
The way a neighborhood gets better historically is because a tipping point of houses are bought by people with normal incomes who are looking for a family home. As amenities improve, prices rise, and richer folk move in, but that’s typically after the neighborhoods have already become more than half middle class.
The problem with the fringe areas is that it’s already priced only for the rich, before the middle class has moved in (except for a few lucky people who got in early). There’s been no tipping point. So people buy because they are “speculating” the house will soon be worth more, not because they are looking to raise a family and commit to the place. At least, none of the people I know who live in NYC, barring a few fortunate trust fund heirs or wall street types, can afford even the cheapest of of the open house listings today. And those neighborhoods are losing out because if the house prices hadn’t been run up so high, lots of families I know would be thrilled to live in Crown Heights or Bed Stuy. But not at these prices — they simply can’t afford it, period.
This, too, is classic bubble logic:
“Additionally, the NYC economny in general is better than it was during the time Park Slope was so blighted. So the circumstances NOW (not being the 70’s) would indicate there is opportunity for advancement to happen much more quickly.”
Look, the reason Park Slope brownstones became such massively valuable investments is precisely because people bought them when everyone thought they shouldn’t, and because the NYC economy was so bad and then became so great. So the fact that NYC’s economy is so good today (meaning that even if it stays good, it won’t be getting dramatically better), and that Crown Heights real estate is already so expensive, means that it’s very unlikely that Crown Heights brownstones bought today will ever be great investments. The rule is buy low, sell high. Not buy high, and pray.