Open House Picks

Right donatella–not a penny more than 1.32499 🙂

Seriously, a great renovation of a beautiful house on one of the best Lefferts manor blocks–perhaps the archetypal one.

Re the Maple St. place, it is really beautiful, gorgeous, but it’s on Maple Street. So it is not worth 1.325.

I have to say, I was in a little huff at the PLG house afrer reading the feature on Casa Cara/Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn a while back: “Caroline’s style is eclectic, a bit exotic, and most UNexpected…” Exotic?

[Note: I ripped Cara a new one over using “ethnic” on another one of her features when describing things from other places other than Bloomingdale’s, Alpert’s, DWR, Target or, now, IKEA.]

I don’t remember writing anything negative at the time, but I found the design sense very cookie-cutterish…and the objects and furniture simply the regular de rigueur flavour of the year, simply what money can buy and what people think is cool and stylish…which soon goes out of style…

I was mostly offended that it was being touted as the being much more inventive/exciting than it was. We can all go to Moss or call up DWR, credit card in hand.

Exotic, creative? If anything it came across as boring and pretentious, a little cutesy, spoiled, and tiresomely “lifestyle-on-autopilot”/”consumerism-as-reality” driven

The way the writer of the feature ate up everything with a spoon was beyond me…and, as it seemed then to me, it was an obvious PR move since they stuck the house on the market post haste. Maybe it was on the market at the time…I’m not doing the research.

It’s a little in the same vein as those big-deal “collectors” who sponsor museum shows of their “collection” and then have a huge Sotheby’s auction two minutes later…surprise! They don’t care about their collection…there are no donations to museums in the picture. It’s all done for profit.

Or, those big properties who’s owner’s real estate handler’s PR firm pushes the property into the magazines and the NYTimes Real Estate or House and Home section…very tiresome and transparent.

Were these kids basically flipping a house, albeit with some sense of style and the means to jazz it up?

Someone needs to tell all the 30-somethings who have never lived through anything (and the 40-somethings and boomers who got sucked into to the insanity of the last bunch of years as well) that the party is over. I’m sorry to be such a b., but sometimes you reach a point where you’ve just had it already.

I’m not harping on Real Estate per se as would the Miss Muffets and BHOs who comment on these threads, but frankly, I’m as tired of the hype as the next person.

These small houses featured above are all overpriced for the market.

Fingers crossed, The school situation in PLG is about to change. The nabe has always had great pre-schools, but not elementary and middle schools. Some of the people involved with the acclaimed Maple Street School are proposing a combined elementary and middle school for the nabe. They are about to present the proposal to the Department of Education. The school would open in 2010.