Open House Picks
Boerum Hill 152 Dean Street Prudential Douglas Elliman Sunday 12-2pm $2,300,000 GMAP P*Shark Carroll Gardens 327 President Street Brown Harris Stevens Sunday 2-4pm $1,700,000 GMAP P*Shark Discussed Here Lefferts Manor 118 Rutland Road Brown Harris Stevens Sunday 1-3pm $1,595,000 GMAP P*Shark Prospect Lefferts Gardens 140 Lincoln Road Aguayo & Huebener Sunday 2-4pm $1,250,000 GMAP P*Shark
Boerum Hill
152 Dean Street
Prudential Douglas Elliman
Sunday 12-2pm
$2,300,000
GMAP P*Shark
Carroll Gardens
327 President Street
Brown Harris Stevens
Sunday 2-4pm
$1,700,000 GMAP P*Shark
Discussed Here
Lefferts Manor
118 Rutland Road
Brown Harris Stevens
Sunday 1-3pm
$1,595,000
GMAP P*Shark
Prospect Lefferts Gardens
140 Lincoln Road
Aguayo & Huebener
Sunday 2-4pm
$1,250,000
GMAP P*Shark
Why are you a sucker if you buy a house in Lefferts Manor for $950K? Have you even seen the houses?
There are amenities in PLG. It’s obvious Nancy G. just doesn’t like black people. Sorry princess, go live elsewhere.
By the way, Lefferts has a great coffee place…
I am one of the “suckers” who is considering buying a house in Lefferts Manor for over $900K. The reason I’m doing so is quite simple: I can’t find anything else close to PS in my price range of $850K. I’m obviously priced out of PS, unless I want a small 2 BR coop. Ditmas Park, which doesn’t have many amenities either, is mostly over $950K. The back side of WT (on the other side of the expressway) has aluminum sided houses for my price or less, but, how can I say this tactfully, they sorely lack the beauty and charm of the LM limestones. I am overextending myself by offering $900K, I realize that I would have done better a couple of years ago, but unfortunately, I need a place now.
In today’s market, when you’re buying a house, your home, you don’t have the luxury of making a reasoned analysis of how the houses *should* be priced. You look at what is the most you can get for your money, and you put in an offer quickly, hoping you don’t get outbid.
So that’s what buyers are thinking of when they pay a price that you’d never dream of paying!
Rutland is way overpriced. that corner is very busy and their have been shootings in that neighborhood in the past… PLG HAS NO AMENITIES. I think it will sell but for closer to 1.2… the house has no kitchen to speak of, and very little details. What are these brokers and sellers thinking??
In terms of the President Street house… my gut is 1.3 mil… try to get a mortgage from a conventional bank.. the house clearly needs $120,000 per floor in work or more… after you spend the $500,000 plus thousand to renovate you have a house worth 2.1.. This broker overprices everything.. She has the big elephant of a house on Montgomery in Park SLope for $7.5 mil.. that has been sitting for five months… should be closer to $4.5 mil..
Anon. 3:35,
I think Lefferts Manor was originally developed for people with incomes a little higher than school teachers and clerks. The $7,500 my house sold for in 1899 was real money then.I guess linusvanpelt was correct to write that the era of the “schoolteacher’s coup” was an anomoly, especially when those very low prices applied not just to PLG but, slightly earlier in the ’60s, to Park Slope, Cobble Hill, the Upper West Side, and so on.
anon 3:55 — you may be right about PLG. I was thinking more about the Park Slope brownstones that academics were buying in the 60s and 70s. Historically, PLG may have been quite a different story, tho I’d be curious to know for whom the 25-footer on Rutland was built.
Bob can speak to that I’m sure. But yes from what I’ve read the LM houses were built for the middle class as a cheaper alternative to Park Slope and other areas. The later stages of the development (the brick houses and Tudor houses) were for more working class types. Now that those houses are selling in the 900’s, not too many working class types can afford them.
The irony is (as I understand it from friends who live there), the beautiful homes (or at least the limestone row houses) in Lefferts Manors and vicinity were built for the middle class, and not the upper middle class–the teachers and clerks referenced above. Sadly, they are now very out of reach to any who would be looking to buy today.
anon 2:34 —
And if you’re happy in PLG, enjoy it. My point was not that PLG is a good or bad neighborhood. It was to ask why PLG prices have appreciated (and maybe this is just my misperception) as fast or faster than places where “amenities” have improved more. (And PLG booster Bob M used the term “amenities” before I did.)
If you like not being tempted by $5 coffee, good on you. But you could have avoided that temptation in PLG 5 years ago or more — so what is the *change* in the neighborhood that supports a greater *change* in the cost to live there? The houses are no more beautiful. The park didn’t just get built.
You may be right (if I read you correctly) that the main change is that house buyers are more aware of PLG than they used to be. But the upshot is that — even for those who don’t care about “amenities,” however you define them — the discount for going without that $5 coffee place has decreased.
If not one person moving to PLG wants the neighborhood to change in any way, then it’s a moot point. (Tho clearly from posts here and acrossthepark.typepad.com, some people who love PLG nonetheless care about shallow things like nice restaurants and grocery stores.) Otherwise it’s valid to ask if the people buying these ever-pricier houses are paying for changes that have not yet materialized. And again, I don’t think this phenomenon is limited to PLG — far from it!
Anyway, I’m glad you love where you live, and now I’m going to go buy an evil expensive coffee with a bunch of soulless strangers.
Here’s what you just don’t get linusvanpelt & Anon 11:15,
Those amenities that you keep going on & on about are just not that important to some of us. I like not having a bunch of restuarants luring strangers into my neighborhood. I like not being tempted by $5 coffee. Which is not to say that having a few nice restuarants isn’t a good thing, but too much of a good thing is well…too much.
I prefer the ability to own my home without needing a tenant. It’s worth the cost to have my daughter growing up with her cousins, aunts & uncles near. And while the museums, park & botanic gardens have always been there, I think like much of Brooklyn, they are now more appreciated.
Looking at the developements that are taking place west of the PLG side of Prospect Park, I don’t think they’re going to change any of those neighborhoods for the better. But I’m sure there will be increased amenities. Enjoy them.