Open House Picks: Six Months Later

Did you see the Times this weekend? “Living In Beorum Hill, Brooklyn: Subway Lines Galore, But Who Is Leaving?” The BH house is in it. There goes the neighborhood.

To echo slick’s point about how BH has changed, in the boarded up store fronts that were where the theater on Court is now, there was a prior theater. It showed porn. Anything on the east side of Clinton was viewed as on the edge of the Heights. That plus needing work could get you a house for less than $500k.

I sometimes wonder what many of the commentators here do for day jobs given the volume of comments. Usually, I’m working during the day and observe what’s going on here in the evening since I am expected to focus on what I get paid for when I’m in the office. Any way, since it seems my memory is being called into question as to the availability of homes in BH in the mid 90s (since it appears many readers were in their teens or had less financial resources), I checked property shark for yesterday’s HOTD. According to the site, a mortgage for $350k was registered on 7/18/95 after a deed was recorded on 7/6/95. So the sale price was probably high 300s. If I erred in my recollection of price, I think I was within the sampling error. House definitely needed work and I expected to spend money on that.

But for those who think there were no homes below a $1 million in BH, all I can say is you were not here looking. As a young professional making decent but not outrageous money then, our budget was about $500k. We saw houses all over BH and CH. Wasn’t interested in PS so we didn’t look there so I can’t speak to prices there. What I do know is that the price I paid for the place I bought was about what the previous owner had paid in the late ’80s as NY real estate had already done the rocket up then crash and burn and was only beginning the recovery in the mid ’90s. That owner did better than the one who sold the State St HOTD as it looks like he paid at least $437,350 in 1986, again according to property shark. An example of the ’80 exuberance.

About the $2.5mm high water price in BH in 1995, I recall that the highest trade in BH recently was something in the range of $20-25 million. So if you compare top end to bottom range of the brownstone market, you see a 7-8 multiple between then and now. Nothing too surprising there.

“It can actually take 8-10 months to sell, even in a good market”

Since we’re in a particularly bad market, or more precisely, a particularly bad economy, I’d say that one fact doesn’t bode particularly well for properties sitting on the market.

The fundamentals of the economy, despite John McCain’s declaration, are still not strong, and are likely to slip once the stimulus wears off. We’re shedding jobs and stagnating WITH 1.2 Trillion in gov’t spending.

Sellers better get in front of the market, or, as is happening with most listings, they will fall behind, and play my favorite game, “price cut catch-up”

good night.