Thursday, December 9, 2010

By the Park, With a Store: 188 Underhill Avenue




We don't usually cover commercial properties, but this one's too juicy to resist. 188 Underhill is a new listing by these jokers at Myspacenyc who don't appear to have any real sales listings on their website (including this one) and only specialize in a ton of rentals. Any building that has a store is considered "mixed-use" and needs a commercial loan, which nowadays requires 30-35% down. But that's about the only downside over here. Very few properties in this area go for $1M or less. The closest might be 108 Underhill, which is much further down the hill, small, and oddly-shaped. Here on 188 Underhill, instead, we've got a huge building that's 19' x 57' making for an ample floorplate. There's a store on the ground floor with a large backyard to work with, in addition to two 3BR rentals that look like they're in decent shape:



This interior is nothing special; clean white walls and handsome wood floors. That does the trick. The pictures aren't as informative as they could be, but at least they're there. We LOVE using this large floorplate for 3BR rentals. That's the ideal lay-out for this kind of space in terms of rental value. We imagine $800/BR would be the lowest one could expect to fetch over here. Who wouldn't want to be situated on a quiet block right by the library, the museum, the park, Grand Army Plaza and the trains there?



The property is very comparable to 692 Washington, another mixed-use place that is slighty smaller, not as well-situated, and a little less expensive.

The retail space offers interesting options, but nobody's done anything with it yet. Property Shark has a listing by the same myspacenyc group that's been up for 245+ days to rent that space for $3,500/month. Probably a little too steep for this area, but who knows what they're paying over there on Vanderbilt? This block might not be too far away from a similar renaissance.

Pro's: size, location, 3BR rentals, price, proximity to Prospect Park

Con's: needs a hefty downpayment, commercial space can be tricky

Ideally: we don't see how this doesn't fetch this price or higher, to a buyer with that commercial loan kind of downpayment. Very few places in this price range have the potential to gross $9K-ish/month and offer this proximity to the park

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