"No Way To Know"?: 104 Berkeley Place

On Platinum Member radar since day 1, this killer 3-Family house in Park Slope at 104 Berkeley Place lists 6 months ago with a smaller broker who doesn't take very good pictures of the place or get it the exposure it deserves.  Which is why it took so long to sell and didn't fetch its asking price.  Corcoran could've gotten $2.5M easily for this place in this market, but it dipped down to $2.35M, closing this month.  Brownstoner claims, "We had no way to know if the home was worth the $2,500,000 asking price."  Well, what ya do, see, is you go visit the place to find out.  We checked it out with Platinum Members early in its listing history.  They passed on it because it wasn't turnkey enough, but the house was simply super.  As Brownstoner aptly points out, you wouldn't know it's nice from these pictures:

But if you're actually shopping, rather than voyeur-ing, this bad-boy was worth the look-see.  A 20' x 50' 3-Family that's live-able & rent-able, with nice details and a spacious backyard.  A few spots needed TLC, but definitely within range.  When listing agents who stand to make tens of thousands in commission decide to save a few hundred dollars by not taking good pictures and not listing everywhere, savvy buyers can save a few hundred thousand dollars on the purchase price.  Their loss is your gain.

After all, it's not rocket science.  Good homes sell themselves in this market.  These guys didn't need to pay a broker a penny and they did just fine for themselves.  And the house next door could've gotten $100K+ more too if marketed better.  But that's in Crown Heights, which some still consider adventurous.  104 Berkeley Place is sitting in prime-time Park Slope and drops 6% off ask, which is what some other brokers would've charged them.   They save a little on the commission and lose A LOT on the sales price. Ya gotta love that in the Information Age, there's still $150,000+ market inefficiencies sitting right under everyone's nose on the very brownstone Brooklyn block that Corcoran gets a few hundred thousand ABOVE asking on a narrow 16-footer at 117 Berkeley Place.

Pro's:  size, location, being under-marketed created some added value

Con's:  some fixing-up to do, not in PS 321, we're still talking about a ton of dough

Ideally:  we haven't said "value" and Park Slope in the same sentence in a while, so it's interesting to see the marketed-vs.-under-marketed pattern playout in such a prime location.  Luckily there are still a few more out there...