Open House Picks

The Ft. Greene Place property is a good price if you can deal with the garden rental problem. But, it’s a GREAT location and priced appropriately. Someone will get a gem. Ft. Greene Place is a beautiful street with beautiful 20 Foot Wide Brownstones.

The 338 4th street house in PS seems overpriced at $2.195 million. 336 4th street just next door with the same square footage, according to property shark, sold in 2003 for $1.2million. I can’t imagine that the prices could inflate by 80% in 4 years. I can see it being listed for $1.7m or even $1.8m (which assumes 10% price appreciation a year)but $2.195 seems to be a stretch to me. Plus, you can rent it for 7,400 a month and is a better option than paying $13,000 in mortgage payments a month at the current jumbo rate of 7.125%. Your tax deductibility at top rate only reduces it to $6,500 a month but AMT could kick in at some point and reduce the tax deductiblity. In addition, you are going to need to pay for real estate tax, water and heating, and general maintenance cost, which could come out to an additional $500-$1000 a month or $7,000-$7,500 in real cost, which you would otherwise not need to pay if you rented instead. Finally, if you bought, you would have to pay closing and legal fees of between 50k-100k today.

To follow up my 1:42 PM comment yesterday about the NYT ad for 133 Maple Street having mis-represented the house; I also Emailed the broker about the LM Covenant and R2 zoning. I noticed this morning that the reference to the possibility of creating an apartment has been removed from the listing. I’d like to thank the broker, who appears to have simply made an honest mistake, for making this correction.

Guest at 10:29 wrote:
“No offense, but by airing your “sneaking suspicions” here without any substantiating evidence, aren’t you committing essentially the same offense as the person who’s the object of your suspicions? By generating rumors that are either pro or con this property, you’re doing a real disservice to potential buyers who read this blog.”

Had Brownstoner not deleted the May 11th Open House comments from this person, I think there would actually be strong circumstantial evidence for my speculation, given the extraordinary similarity in style and allegations. And, yes, I admit it’s speculation, but it was clearly identified as such, rather than a flat-out statement of supposed fact regarding the structural condition of the Maple Street property. My post was neither pro, nor con the house (I have no interest in whether or not it sells), merely the raising of the possibility that the negative statement regarding its structural integrity may well not be based on fact. If you, 10:29 can’t tell the difference between those two scenarios, then you need a course in logic.

11:20 totally owns one of these houses.