Imagine you were minding your own business with $2M+ burning a whole in your pocket for a nice brownstone in a prime part of Park Slope. You'd think if you were on the website for one of the Slope brokers like Garfield Realty (whose tag line boasts, "Service is Everything") you could get a realistic sense of what they have to offer. Afterall, the Corcoran broker you went to only showed you Corcoran listings, and the same thing happened at a few other places. So you started just seeking places out yourself. You don't care who has the dang listing, you simply want the best house for your money. So you click on Garfield's website and you see this 3,200+ sqft meaty chunk of "Renaissance Revival Brownstone" on a great block between 7th & 8th Avenues. Tell me more, right? Wrong.
220 Garfield Place is a 2-Family which has bobbed & weaved with different brokers at this $2.15M price tage since 2009, and actually just sold for its asking price on 11/9/2011. But don't expect the "Service is Everything" broker to tell you that. Afterall, why would you think some place called "Garfield Realty" would have their finger on the pulse of real estate on "Garfield Place"? After collecting upwards of $100,000 in commission, how hard would it be to put "SOLD" somewhere on your listing, at least out of a courtesy to your next potential $2M+ buyers? (Granted, it looks like an open listing, and it's unclear to us if Garfield collected any commission.)
Much like our last pick north of $2M, this long-listed property finally got swooped up by the rising market. The difference with this place on Garfield is they were in a prime enough area to sit at their price and wait for the market to meet them, without having to come down in price to meet the market halfway. While Garfield Realty couldn't be bothered to show any interior pics - and, from the looks of it, neither could Aguayo & Huebener or Brooklyn Properties when they had their shot at the listing - Brown Harris Stevens was able to muster a few grimey shots back in 2009.
At least Aguayo & Huebener had the decency to put "IN CONTRACT!" in big red letters on their version of the listing:
And Prudential was happy to tell us their $2.6M listing for 250 Garfield Place had a signed contract too. Compare these prices to the $3.75M asking price for the immaculate renovation of 178 Garfield Place that a member of the BK To The Fullest team did.
As soon as we work out the details of how to display it, we should be putting an imposter list together on a seperate page within the blog. It's long overdue.
Pro's: curb appeal, top notch location, double duplex
Con's: sold and nobody told us, so-so interior, another sign of a frothy market
Ideally: still kind of surprising to see this sale at this price with the best two $1.8M's in Park Slope still dangling out there.
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