For a few months now, one of the prettiest houses on one of the nicest blocks in Bed-Stuy, 158 Hancock Street, is available for all to see, but in a place where hardly anyone who cares about this type of product ever looks. Sure, Massey Knakal (now Cushman Wakefield) may be "NYC's #1 Building Sale Firm", and they can sell $40M packages, but that still doesn't mean they know what to do with a fixer-upper townhouse like 158 Hancock Street. For example, don't try finding this on your StreetEasy, because that's a site one of the partners at Massey Knakal would tell you no one searches on. Consolidating this nonsense could probably happen in a day and be much easier than merging MK & CW, but for whatever reason, still hasn't happened. With a monkey-see/monkey-do asking price of $2.1M on 158 Hancock, Massey still slaps adorable pro-forma numbers together on their set-up of $3,000/month per floor, even though they probably couldn't show you a single living-breathing rental on that block for that price. Rents have certainly come a long way, but isn't this the cutest thing you ever did see...?
And what they don't show you on the one pager is anything anyone might actually care about, like the interior condition, albeit unsavory at times. And that's just part of why offers won't come in at their maximum potential. Although it does show we've come a long way from when Platinum Members were picking up the barely-marketed 160 Hancock Street next door for $1.1M cash.
For interior pics of 158 Hancock Street, you've gotta go to the 16-page offering memorandum, a pomp & circumstance hallmark of the large brokerage firms which is usually pages of white noise with a lil' data. Hats off to them, though, for actually getting some telling interior pics in there. Wood details & drapes, anyone?
Working live-able spaces and original details...
We've seen this movie before. When commercial brokers get their hands on rezi pieces and don't necessarily have the patience or care or strategy to get tippy-top end-user dollar out of them. How many people are kicking themselves they missed some of the lost great Clinton Hill fixer-uppers for $1.5M at 108 & 148 Gates Avenue? Savvy buyers don't care who has the listing. They just want the best house for the best price. Nowadays on Hancock, there's another even more stunning house that's an SRO available on this block with a large commercial firm not being marketed openly, asking $1.5M. 158 Hancock could cruise to that number in its sleep with the right treatment. Just ask 204 Jefferson Avenue. Hancock is probably a much better buy than 204 Jefferson and only time & the market will tell if it can surpass that price. Another day, another couple of million dollars in inefficient brownstone Brooklyn.
Pro's: great west Bed-Stuy fixer-upper, curb appeal, may not sell at full market price, some original details in great shape, updated mechanicals
Con's: price is reaching, robotic commercial listing treatment of a great rezi listing, tenancy?
Ideally: a relative steal at $1.5M and a joke at $2.2M, but there's plenty of arbitrage to play with in between
No comments:
Post a Comment