Thursday, January 5, 2012

Won't Last Long: 414 Adelphi Street



They've done it again. This team of legit brokers with Corcoran brings you what they can honestly say is "one of the best townhouses on the market in Brooklyn today!"

414 Adelphi Street in Fort Greene is a straight-forward 3-Family with nice pictures for $1.399M. Why settle for so-so in Clinton Hill at this price, when you can get into Fort Greene?



True, it's been on the market since September at $1.499M, but they just dropped price and slapped the nice pictures up there & they're having an open house on Sunday. We're not mad at 17.75' wide for something so turnkey and legitimately listed, so close to the train & the park in Fort Greene. So what if it's down the block from the housing projects that gave some pause on 472 Carlton? With all the madness in pricing going on, and uncover listings abound, it's nice to see such a clear play. Take the mantles, the owner's duplex with yard, updated kitchen, some original floors, and run!

Pro's: location, turnkey, real listing, price

Con's: 17.75' wide, some upgrades better than others, not everyone's favorite projects down the street

Ideally: we defy you to name a better buy at a better price within 20 blocks.

15 comments:

  1. We visited this place a few weeks ago at an OH. The building was less glossy than the pictures suggested and would need some work. Also, lack of 2nd bathroom in owner's duplex was a bit of a drawback. We just noticed Corcoran took it off market this week, having listed it back in September for 1.499M and then reducing price to 1.399M in December. A shame, this would have quickly moved at a better (and more reasonable, in our opinion) price point.

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  2. Do we know that isn't off the market because it has moved?

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    1. Good question. Usually Corcoran's website lists a property as "in contract" for a while. In this case, there was a showing last weekend, and today it says "off market" in the program Corcoran uses to help buyers track listings. When I went to Corcoran's site, the property is no longer even listed. So it is definitely possible that it has sold, but I am not confident this is the case.

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    2. Or perhaps it's not "in contract" yet, but they have plenty of offers to work with and don't need to bother having the listing up for now. Contracts can sometimes take weeks to negotiate even after agreeing on price.

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    3. I'm definitely keeping an eye on this one. Love the site, btw!

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  3. Jonathonne

    99 times out of 100 Corc leaves it UP as long as possible "IN CONTRACT" to show all how quick it moved, so I would say it didn't sell, but JMHO It was on Market since Sept

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  4. Listing def' went down for a few days, now it's back up.

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  5. Yeah, we actually went into offer on it a couple of weeks back. The comps show this place is valued closer to 1.2M (is 2560 sq ft, only, unlike others at 1.4 which are closer to 2800) and owner is not really willing to budge from his asking price. Owner took it off temporarily to do some repairs to the boiler, I believe, but it will be back up very soon, we're told.

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  6. What is available for $1.2M that you could go for instead?

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    1. Good point; at the same time, I don't believe in overpaying on a property. We would have been happy to pay 1.4M had the property been valued at that, but when we did the math against the comps and learned it should not have such a high asking price, we knew we wouldn't pay the 1.4. Just because everybody else is listing their townhome at 1.5 these days doesn't mean you should -- especially if yours is smaller, with fewer amenities, and in a location that has some downsides.

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    2. Just saying, "overpaying" is a relative term when the next-best active neighbors are an SRO for $1.5M on Clermont, a "renovated" 4-Family with no pics that just raised price from $1.6M to $1.8M also on Clermont, a shell that needs over $500K in work for $1.35M on Cumberland, a fixer-upper that just went in contract with a list price of $1.5M on Gates, and a handful of dinky $2M+ listings throughout Fort Greene and nice ones in Clinton Hill. Comps are in the past. IMHO, this in one of the best listings in the present.

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    3. Well, it's like the stock market where the price means nothing until you sell your shares. People can ask whatever they want, but until these others from above sell, you can't really say they are "worth" anything. The closing price determines the worth, and why comps are always used. Makes you wonder why this one has been on market going on 6 months, if it's priced so well. To me, this listing is arbitrarily priced.

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  7. Actually it's NOT like the stock market in that you don't have interchangeable securities being traded every milli-second with real-time bid/ask spreads. We're talking about unique properties that only a few dozen of sell every year. Keep in mind, with comps, you're looking at a price that was negotiated months ago (then a contract was negotiated & signed a few weeks later, then it closed a few months later, and then the recorded sale was posted publicly a few weeks after that), which can be misleading in an up market. What's true is that it's only worth what someone will pay for it, which is why there is no true objective value to any of these places. But it comes down to what I first said when I posted this bad-boy, "We defy you to name a better buy at a better price within 20 blocks."

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  8. Hey guys,

    I am just starting to look around for potentially buying a house around Brooklyn, and I went to a couple of open houses today including this one. Just curious: this listing doesn't seem to be in that great of a shape. The floor is somewhat tilted, and the stairs probably needs to be redone soon; and a couple of warning sign.

    And the other unit that I looked at at 482 Warren also has some rather significant drawbacks (low ceiling for the ground floor, 7'-wide "bedrooms"). Am I just setting expectations too high?

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