Open House Picks
Clinton Hill 282 Dekalb Avenue Archive! Warren Lewis Sunday 12-4 $1,850,000 GMAP P*Shark Park Slope 407 8th Street Brown Harris Stevens Sunday 12-2 $1,425,000 GMAP P*Shark Bedford Stuyvesant 585 MacDonough Street Kirkland Homes Sunday 12-3 $750,000 GMAP P*Shark Bushwick 51 Linden Street Douglas Elliman Sunday 2-4 $675,000 GMAP P*Shark
Clinton Hill
282 Dekalb Avenue Archive!
Warren Lewis
Sunday 12-4
$1,850,000
GMAP P*Shark
Park Slope
407 8th Street
Brown Harris Stevens
Sunday 12-2
$1,425,000
GMAP P*Shark
Bedford Stuyvesant
585 MacDonough Street
Kirkland Homes
Sunday 12-3
$750,000
GMAP P*Shark
Bushwick
51 Linden Street
Douglas Elliman
Sunday 2-4
$675,000
GMAP P*Shark
12:01:
Congrstulations. You may be on the way to becoming what Martin Luther King Jr. called a “transformed non-conformist.” Your children, too.
Yet another advantage to living in Brooklyn.
NOP
I am probably racist to some extent. I am less racist than my parents were and my children are being brought up in a way that I hope will ensure they are not racist at all. Some things do not change quickly and unless people make a conscious decision to change them they will not change at all.
My family and I live in Bed Sty and I do not consider that I have put my family at risk by moving here. I guess moving here has forced me to analize my own thoughts though.
We moved from Manhatten with a limited amount of money and I wanted to buy a house to give my family some space. I guess before I moved here I did not think I was racist, but after moving here I found myself suspecting and distrusting of the 90%. I have tried to make a conscious effort to change.
Since I have changed my own thinking the area around me has also changed. I guess perception is reality. My wife and I rarely feel unsafe (although we do not walk around late at night either).
My point is that if you suspect many of the 90% of the people around you then 1. you are never going to feel safe and 2. you are probably a rasist. The number of peole around you that are likely to hurt you is so small you are pretty unlikly to encounter them if you take the most basic of precautions.
When you talk about crime rate being higher, in Bed Sty consider how you think about crime. A crime rate as high as it is in the west village is still likely to affect you at some point in your life (that’s life in a big city) but it’s unlike to affect you in a significant or life threatening way. If the crime rate in Bed Sty is 300% as high I’m happy to take the risk. Three times the risk of something unlikely is still unlikely.
More importantly I can easily take precautions that can keep us safe in Bed Sty (I mean against the real not percieved risks)but I can never afford a full house in the west villiage.
I suspect that many of the people on this site that see Bed Sty and other areas as so undesirable would still feel right at home in a white neighborhood with the same crime rate.
If you can get beyond your own rasism and look at architecture, beauty, size, price or closeness to the subway as someone above said you will benefit yourself. I have been here four years now and I have seen prices rise significantly.
To those that say that 675 is too much for a house in Bushwick, that is fine but make sure that you are not living in the past, some things change slowly and you do not notice. There was a time when 100 was too much… and then it was not.
Buying a beautiful house in a not so beautiful area (yet)is just a choice. I made it, have benefited from it and plenty of people will do the same. Not everyone is racist and some of those who are can change.
The over-the-top emphasis on crime in these posts is really more about rasism than it initially appears.
The thing about discussions of crime in Bed Sty or Crown Heights is a discussion of whether crime is concentrated in certain areas or disbursed throughout the whole area.
Both neighborhoods are very large and have sections which are nice (such as Sty-Heights) and not so nice (projects, etc.).
Do they map where crimes occur?
MontroseMorris,
“would it be possible for one thread to feature a house in one of these communities, and discuss it on the merits of its architecture, beauty, size, price or closeness to the subway, without the predictions of some kind of cloud of crime … It really gets tiresome.”
You know what gets tiresome? You. Would it be possible for you to not bring up crown heights in threads about other neighborhoods? Would it be possible for you to just skip commenting on every post that may involve your neighborhood? Would it be possible for you to right a comment that wasn’t 5 paragraphs long?
Brownstoner:
On a recent drive through Crown Heights, the first return to my boyhood neighborhood in nearly 50 years, here’s what I saw on a winter’s weekday afternoon:
— Knots of people in puffy jackets walking around Grant Square.
— Shoppers with carts going to and from a supermarket on Nostrand Avenue.
— Elders going up and down the steps of a religious institution on Eastern Parkway.
— A group of little kids running (happily) into the door of a house on President Street.
— A woman coming out of the door of her house on Pacific Street about to walk her dog.
— A “hipster” turning the corner of Dean and Nostrand.
— Clots of people waiting for the bus on Bergen Street.
— A woman parking her car at the Hebron Church School on Brooklyn Avenue.
— Etc.
In other words, ordinary Brooklyn community life.
Nostalgic on Park Avenue
I agree that Montrose Morris bends over backwards to deny or minimize crime in Crown Heights. It must be difficult to have made the biggest purchase of his/her life in a crime-ridden area that shows little, if any, chances of improving. Generally speaking, many people will overlook properties in an area that the NYT reports as being an Operation Impact zone.
Your points granted, 12:15. But I have never said that the prices in our neighborhoods are justified. For all the reasons you gave, and a few more, they are not. I happen to think $799 for a house here is too much, unless it looks like the Pfizer mansion. A million plus is ridiculous.
We cannot compete with Fort Greene, Boerum Hill, et al, because of an elevated crime rate, yeah, but more because of the economic conditions of much of the population, who have suffered from a lack of education, jobs and upward mobility, thereby causing a lack in the variety of choice in the commercial sector, not to mention years of benign neglect by most of the rest of the city in terms of schools, services, and attention. Those who have always been a bit better off here, have long ago learned that we need to go out of the community to shop, to seek medical attention, to go to restaurants, to even go to the movies.
But today’s real estate realities, specifically the rise in prices in other neighborhoods and a general return to the city have turned everyone’s eyes to places no one wanted to go before, and here we are. People who have put down roots in our communities, whether 40 years ago or last year, want a slow, gradual easing into higher prices, accompanied by better everything, accompanied by a firm commitment to truly affordable housing. That is the only way to make a better community. I have always said that pockets of affluence surrounded by poverty and neglect do absolutely no one any good. Unfortunately, I do not see prices going down significantly. No one will ever be able to buy a house in Bed Stuy or Crown Heights for $350K again, whether that is what they are really worth, or not.
The neighborhoods where houses are priced under $700,000 are years away from much improvement, it’s true. Some neighborhoods emerging from being called fringe or borderline, where houses are more like a million or just under, their values are increasing at a faster rate. But then that’s $300K to $400K more you have to spend to buy there.
I really think if you’re spending less than $700K start with a coop or condo. By the time you really need all the space of the house you can trade up. It’s less risky financially if you need to sell sooner than planned.
12:15 Well where am I supposed to buy with my 800k and I want a house? It is not as though the majority of buyers are passing up affordable homes in your approved neighborhoods to live in Bed-Stuy or Crown Heights. People purchase homes where they can afford them.
Do I think 900k is too much for a house in a neighborhood with bad schools and poor services? Hell yes. But if I want to own a house and it’s my only option, I guess I’ll have to buy and hope for the best.
(Of course, this is theoretical as we are two school teachers and our actual budget is much much lower. Luckily there have been a lot more listings for homes under 600k in the “fringe” neighborhoods. I can’t wait to be part of community of middle-class homeowners.)