Open House Picks

It is a great post BB- and I’m sure the points you raised haven’t been brought up often enough.But I would hope that the minority population is included in and part of that process.

I loved the Warren Mews house- tiny though it may be. I love that complex- used to walk through the gardens on my way to volunteer work in Red Hook. So beautiful there- like another world.

My hesitation with the Bed-Stuy house is that it is 4 family. For me I would rather have1, maybe 2 family. It’s hard to tell since they have no interior shots- for that price there should be a ton of them.

RE Warren Street: Nice 2 bedroom apartments on the upper west side can now be had for under 1M. The mid-size coop market has dropped a good deal in Manhattan. So I would not count on too many frustrated buyers rushing to buy Bklyn properies at 1.3M.

RE BS: Fabulous post Brownbomber. The same basic argument can be made for pricing in most “fringe” areas–the best possible thing for the neighborhoods’ long-term growth and development is slow and steady increases that allow the “mid-range” buyers who are priced out of other areas and who are historically the people who help to gentrify areas. But that is not in the best interest of either sellers or realtors.

But people should at least think twice before they applaud rampaging price increases. They’re great if you plan on selling–but they are not great if you actually intend to stay in the area.

Bed-Stuy brokers are the dumbest people on earth. I don’t understand their insane obsession with the $1mm price mark in Bed-Stuy. There are 6,000 brownstones in Bed-Stuy and you will never create the critical turnover in brownstone ownership that is necessary to gentrify and turn the area into the next Fort Greene or Clinton Hill.

Who are the folks buying in BS? For the most part it’s people who are not rich, looking for value and willing to make some compromises with respect to the neighborhood and its lack of amenities. At $1mm you are pricing out a lot of first time homebuyers who would otherwise consider BS because of the great brownstone stock. IMHO, it’s far better if 1,000 homes exchanged hands at $500k then 10 homes at $1mm. Brokers have to understand that BS is not a sprint but rather a marathon, i.e., getting to FG/CH status will take some time. In this regard, prices can not get ahead of the neighborhood. I firmly believe that brokers must do a better job of explaining this basic concept to prospective sellers. Right now expectations are too unrealistic.

I don’t care about brownstone prices in FG and CH. Those nabes are much further along in the gentrification experiment. FG/CH are much smaller communities, so gentrification there was more easily obtained. In the beginning, FG/CH prices stayed low enough to bring about a critical demographic change. If you have 150 home sales over a five year period in FG/CH that produced a sizeable demographic shift because the area is so small. This in turn promoted economic and real estate development in the community.

However, the same 150 in Bed-Stuy would not even be a drop in the bucket. It’s the largest neighborhood in New York City and has the city’s largest concentration of intact brownstones. The turnover that Bed-Stuy needs is in the thousands not hundreds. With that being said, that critical turnover will never be achieved if every seller, no matter the section of the nabe, thinks that he or she can get $1mm for their property. It’s time to put on the breaks. Obviously the free market is going to determine the rate of change and development in Bed-Stuy but I just think that it’s in the nabe’s best long term interest if prices at the very least stabilized. Some folks don’t want to hear this but BS needs gentrification and given it’s large minority and underclass population it’s not going to happen if brokers start pricing every damn brownstone over a $1mm. To Brokers: Please put on the brakes – you’re biting off your nose to spite your face. In such a large brownstone community, you should be more concerned with volume rather than sale price milestones.

Is the price on that bed stuy house for real?

Not that great of a block or street, IMO.

I’m guessing that since there are no interior picks, the inside ain’t all that.

The Rugby Road house could be in OK condition, despite lack of pix. This listing went up very recently, and sometimes it takes Mary Kay a while to get the pix. Still, even if it does need some cosmetics, it seems to be priced to sell (although things have dropped a little bit here over the past year, it seems – or else MKG is just pricing low – the Victorian on Beverley Road went above ask and it was priced at 999k). The other reasons the house could be priced under the 1 million mark is that West Midwood stretches all the way down to Avenue H, has a lot of active red-bricking in that part of the nabe, and is quite a ways from Prospect Park and the ever improving amenities of Cortelyou Road. You need your car for groceries, etc…, whereas Ditmas Parkers and Park Westers, PPS residents and the Beverley crowd can easily get away without one most of the time.