The Real Deal: A Dose of Reality for Crown Heights Market
Citing some of the discussions on this blog, real estate mag The Real Deal puts the Crown Heights market in its place this month with an article entitled, “Sellers Swallowing Their Pride in Crown Heights.” While not dismissing the nabe’s merits, the basic thesis is that the market got ahead of itself and there’re are…
Citing some of the discussions on this blog, real estate mag The Real Deal puts the Crown Heights market in its place this month with an article entitled, “Sellers Swallowing Their Pride in Crown Heights.” While not dismissing the nabe’s merits, the basic thesis is that the market got ahead of itself and there’re are lots of homeowners with a deluded sense of what their places are worth. (Yesterday’s HOTD is further proof of that phenomenon.) Several brokers are surprisingly frank about clients who insisted on slapping ridiculous prices on their houses, only to have them languish on the market. Here’s a great anecdote:
Kevin McNeill, a senior vice president at Corcoran, is all too familiar with this phenomenon. He points to a three-story townhouse he helped put on the market for $1.2 million back in June. “It was overpriced, but her next-door neighbor had listed at $1.4 million,” says McNeill. “Hers was similar [to her neighbor’s], and when she saw $1.4 million it was hard to talk her off the ledge.” For two months the home languished. Then in August the seller agreed to drop the price by about $100,000, but still it sat. It wasn’t until McNeill convinced her to lower the price below $1 million that the house sold. “The minute we brought it to $995,000, we sold it within days,” says McNeill. “We closed at $960,000.”
The implicit conclusion of the article, which we’d agree with, seems to be that in the new, post-subprime paradigm, $1 million is a huge psychological barrier in Crown Heights, as it is for most of Bed Stuy. But as Corcoran’s McNeill says, “When people talk about price reductions in these neighborhoods, it’s not about the market, it’s about improper pricing.”
Sellers Swallowing Their Pride in Crown Heights [The Real Deal]
Photo by gkjarvis
Well, 2:21, apparently many of your neighbors disagree with you. Check out the Crown Heights board on brooklynian.com, where posts about muggings, gunfire, gang activity, and assualts are commonplace.
http://www.brooklynian.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=4&sid=fb86b426e5152c2d5878557890cb6088
“Nothing we say will change the fact that Crown Heights is a slum that’s pretty worthless unless you get your kicks walking around collecting spent condoms and hypodermic needles. Get a grip people.”
Posted by: guest at December 6, 2007 1:06 PM
I live in Crown Heights. I come home to an absolutely gorgeous (no exaggeration) limestone every night and sometimes very late at night. I have yet to see anything resembling what 1:06 PM described. I have great neighbors who are very friendly. They care a lot about their homes and their block. In short 1:06 PM, nothing you said has a ring of truth to it.
“there’re are” – try again!
Wrong, 1:29: born and raised.
Does that change your mind?
“as the flight from the congestion of AY accelerates in the fall of ’08.”
It’s funny little dream world you inhabit, isn’t it?
Nothing we say will change the fact that Crown Heights is a slum that’s pretty worthless unless you get your kicks walking around collecting spent condoms and hypodermic needles. Get a grip people.
Posted by: guest at December 6, 2007 1:06 PM
Never been there, right?
True, 9.99 vs. 10.00 makes a big mental difference, bu this also speaks to the rise in prices extending further out beyond PS, BH, CG, snd such pre-maturely leaving owners belieiving they were taking part in this real estate lottery when in fact they weren’t becuase it was crown heights. Beutifull houses. Sit one of those on the North Slope and you will pay 2-3M. 1.4 would seem cheap, woudln’t it? Location!
Posted by: guest at December 6, 2007 11:28 AM
What will CH be worth after the 100 billion dollar investment is completed 15 blocks away to the west?
Nothing we say will change the fact that Crown Heights is a slum that’s pretty worthless unless you get your kicks walking around collecting spent condoms and hypodermic needles. Get a grip people.
I have said for a long time now that the sudden price increase in CH was insane.I own on the UES in the city (an investment now)but live in PS Bklyn.I picked up an investment property in CH in 2000 for less than 300k.Four family, five floors.It more than pays for itself.I blinked and all of a sudden every home was on the market for 1 mil and over.Uneducated buyers paid the asking prices and in a few cases over, thinking that they were so savy( they were not)and soon got stuck. Brokers laughed all the way to the bank (Corcoran agents were the worst with pricing)and the new owners wondered how to pay a 8k-10k mortgage when they only had 2k-3k in rental income.Just because a brownstone is a bit cheaper than a NYC apt., does not mean that it is good deal. The price for CH should be between 500-750k tops.Most people who became owners at the inflated prices of the last few years in CH are in trouble with pending foreclosures and before you think you know what they look like ,think again.