This blog is temporarily closed; I love Crown heights Real Estate, so
if anyone would like to continue it I will be glad to work with them. Please email me at sblesof@aol.com and we will discuss the details
The blog is set to open in the near future - please stay tuned.
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Friday, December 15, 2006
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
House of the Day
Wow! Great location and great price does anyone know the address?
Crown Height
FSBO
Kingston and Eastern Parkway
IF YOU'RE THINKING OF LIVING IN CROWN HEIGHTS
(Interesting artical written in the New York Times about Crown Heights Real Estate)
Published: January 20, 1985
CROWN HEIGHTS is being rediscovered. Regarded for years as a dangerous ghetto, the central Brooklyn neighborhood now attracts many newcomers in search of affordable housing near the more prosperous Park Slope.
During the 1950's and 1960's, Crown Heights's population dropped as ethnic and racial composition shifted and poverty and crime discouraged new investment. The 1970's brought new vigor to Brooklyn, largely through the brownstone revival and renewed interest in the borough's architecture and history. Crown Heights's innate attractiveness and the personal and economic investment of its residents have kept the community's social fabric from unraveling completely.
Today, community involvement is the key. ''There are well over 100 active community organizations in Crown Heights,'' said Pat Denton of the Prospect-Lefferts Garden Neighborhood Association. ''These groups help to bring positive change to the area.''
Housing diversity is bringing people back to Crown Heights, which is bounded on the north by Atlantic Avenue, the south by Empire Boulevard, the east by Ralph Avenue and the west by Flatbush Avenue. There are brownstone apartments in the northwestern corner, sometimes called Prospect Heights. Prewar apartment houses, many now co-ops, line Eastern Parkway. The southeastern corner has many one- and two-family homes, several dating to the early 1900's and passed from one generation to another.
Jesse G. Alexander, assessor-in- charge of the Brooklyn office of the city's Real Property Assessment Bureau, said: ''Trends like the increase in house sales south of Eastern Parkway between New York and Albany Avenues are felt all over the community. It's only a matter of time before real-estate values increase with the growing demand.''
Crown Heights, which until three decades ago was the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, was one of the original neighborhoods designated for funds under the Federal Neighborhood Preservation Program for housing renovation, and community organizations have teamed up with city agencies to rehabilitate abandoned and vacant properties for low- and moderate-income housing. The program, begun in 1973, coordinates the expenditure of local and Federal money in so- called ''neighborhoods in transition.''
''There is a lot more space to be found in Crown Heights for a lot less money than in Park Slope,'' said Jack Winter, owner of the Winter Real Estate Agency on Kingston Avenue. ''People are looking for reasonably priced housing within a comfortable commuting distance of New York and Crown Heights offers that.''
The IRT No. 2 line to New Lots Avenue and the Nos. 4 and 5 to Utica Avenue serve the community with service to midtown Manhattan in 40 minutes to an hour, depending on the time of day.
''Work is Manhattan and home is Crown Heights,'' said Sarah Thibodeau, a singer and part-time secretary who lives on Eastern Parkway. ''I suppose Crown Heights isn't for everyone. You can't dial out for pizza any time of the night, but there's space out here, space with trees.''
Houses, when available, range from about $125,000 to $150,000. One that sold recently for $125,000 paid taxes of about $1,000. Studios rent for $300 to $350 a month and one- and two-bedrooms range from $400 to $600. Co-ops along Eastern Parkway average $20,000 a room.
Crown Heights once included the Lefferts farm, one of the largest in western Long Island. The Lefferts mansion, built in the 1660's, still stands in Prospect Park, just off Flatbush Avenue near the zoo, where it was relocated in 1917.
After the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883, one-family mansions sprang up along the borough's broad avenues. When the IRT subway line was tunneled beneath Eastern Parkway in 1920, apartment houses replaced some of these mansions and the parkway became the spine of a middle-class community with a large number of professionals.
The parkway, which was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted with Charles Vaux and has been declared a historic landmark, has been granted $7 million in Federal funds for a restoration that will include new lighting, trees, traffic signals and sidewalks.
Click here for more
Published: January 20, 1985
CROWN HEIGHTS is being rediscovered. Regarded for years as a dangerous ghetto, the central Brooklyn neighborhood now attracts many newcomers in search of affordable housing near the more prosperous Park Slope.
During the 1950's and 1960's, Crown Heights's population dropped as ethnic and racial composition shifted and poverty and crime discouraged new investment. The 1970's brought new vigor to Brooklyn, largely through the brownstone revival and renewed interest in the borough's architecture and history. Crown Heights's innate attractiveness and the personal and economic investment of its residents have kept the community's social fabric from unraveling completely.
Today, community involvement is the key. ''There are well over 100 active community organizations in Crown Heights,'' said Pat Denton of the Prospect-Lefferts Garden Neighborhood Association. ''These groups help to bring positive change to the area.''
Housing diversity is bringing people back to Crown Heights, which is bounded on the north by Atlantic Avenue, the south by Empire Boulevard, the east by Ralph Avenue and the west by Flatbush Avenue. There are brownstone apartments in the northwestern corner, sometimes called Prospect Heights. Prewar apartment houses, many now co-ops, line Eastern Parkway. The southeastern corner has many one- and two-family homes, several dating to the early 1900's and passed from one generation to another.
Jesse G. Alexander, assessor-in- charge of the Brooklyn office of the city's Real Property Assessment Bureau, said: ''Trends like the increase in house sales south of Eastern Parkway between New York and Albany Avenues are felt all over the community. It's only a matter of time before real-estate values increase with the growing demand.''
Crown Heights, which until three decades ago was the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, was one of the original neighborhoods designated for funds under the Federal Neighborhood Preservation Program for housing renovation, and community organizations have teamed up with city agencies to rehabilitate abandoned and vacant properties for low- and moderate-income housing. The program, begun in 1973, coordinates the expenditure of local and Federal money in so- called ''neighborhoods in transition.''
''There is a lot more space to be found in Crown Heights for a lot less money than in Park Slope,'' said Jack Winter, owner of the Winter Real Estate Agency on Kingston Avenue. ''People are looking for reasonably priced housing within a comfortable commuting distance of New York and Crown Heights offers that.''
The IRT No. 2 line to New Lots Avenue and the Nos. 4 and 5 to Utica Avenue serve the community with service to midtown Manhattan in 40 minutes to an hour, depending on the time of day.
''Work is Manhattan and home is Crown Heights,'' said Sarah Thibodeau, a singer and part-time secretary who lives on Eastern Parkway. ''I suppose Crown Heights isn't for everyone. You can't dial out for pizza any time of the night, but there's space out here, space with trees.''
Houses, when available, range from about $125,000 to $150,000. One that sold recently for $125,000 paid taxes of about $1,000. Studios rent for $300 to $350 a month and one- and two-bedrooms range from $400 to $600. Co-ops along Eastern Parkway average $20,000 a room.
Crown Heights once included the Lefferts farm, one of the largest in western Long Island. The Lefferts mansion, built in the 1660's, still stands in Prospect Park, just off Flatbush Avenue near the zoo, where it was relocated in 1917.
After the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883, one-family mansions sprang up along the borough's broad avenues. When the IRT subway line was tunneled beneath Eastern Parkway in 1920, apartment houses replaced some of these mansions and the parkway became the spine of a middle-class community with a large number of professionals.
The parkway, which was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted with Charles Vaux and has been declared a historic landmark, has been granted $7 million in Federal funds for a restoration that will include new lighting, trees, traffic signals and sidewalks.
Click here for more
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
House of the day: Park Place Beauty
Crown Heights Melonie Lynn
$880,000
Look at this unbelievably beautiful house. I'll bet you these are from the early mansions built on New York Ave in the 1880's.
Look at this unbelievably beautiful house. I'll bet you these are from the early mansions built on New York Ave in the 1880's.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Crown Heights Draws Developers and Bargain Hunters
By Gabby Warshawer.
One look at the Brooklyn enclave of Crown Heights makes it clear that this is a neighborhood with one foot in the past and one striding to the future.
As the city moves forward with a plan to confer landmark status upon a large swath of northern Crown Heights, a condo construction boom is under way in the southern section of the neighborhood.
While the deep cultural and racial divides in Crown Heights are evident in its housing stock and market, both the notoriously polarized black and Orthodox Jewish sections are enjoying a healthy real estate climate -- though in very distinct ways.
In the predominantly West Indian and African-American area to the north, the landmarked district is poised to be the city's largest designation in over 10 years.
"The overall district will include 1,800 buildings, and we hope to designate them in phases," says Lisi de Bourbon, a spokesperson for the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
"We had a hearing for the first 472 buildings on Sept. 19, and we're hoping that the commissioner makes a designation on those in April. After that goes through, we'll move on to another chunk.
"The proposed designation is largely due to the many impressive late-19th and early-20th century Romanesque Revival and Queen Anne-style rowhouses on blocks such as Dean Street between Nostrand and New York avenues.
These houses aren't just getting recognized for their architectural significance and beauty -- they're also looking more appealing to buyers.Gregory Todd, a Corcoran Group agent, recently brokered the sale of 1252 Dean Street, which he describes as a distinctly well-preserved, 1895-vintage rowhouse.
The property is in contract in the high $900,000-range. Another house on the same block just sold for $850,000, the lower price reflecting the fact that it had been chopped up into a multi-family residence.
"These prices are unheard of," says Todd, who lives in the neighborhood and is the special events chair for the Crown Heights North Association. "A friend of mine who lives on that block bought a house there for half that just a few years ago.
"The rising prices in northern Crown Heights can also be attributed to their proximity to the future Atlantic Yards complex.
"The market is strong in areas near the Atlantic Yards development, and that includes Crown Heights," says Matthew Fotis, an investment sales specialist with Marcus & Millichap.
"There's a lot of value in owning a multi-family house around there."Renters -- a significant number of them young, white professionals who'd have stood out even five years ago -- are also discovering the area's value and appeal.
Among them are Katy Hope and her husband, who moved from Clinton Hill to an apartment on St. Francis Place this summer.
"We vastly prefer it because it's so much friendlier," says Hope, who works in publishing. "Our feeling in Clinton Hill was that it was a neighborhood that had gentrified too quickly.
There are these brownstones going for $2 million, but there's still drug dealing happening out in the open.
"While Hope considers her new two-bedroom apartment, which rents for $1,800, "not a bargain," rents in the area are cheaper than in neighboring and more firmly gentrified Prospect Heights.One-bedrooms in the proposed historic district average between $1,000 and $1,300, with two-bedrooms generally starting at around $1,400.
Todd said that while longtime residents are concerned about maintaining infrastructure, the wave of new renters and buyers is bringing positive changes.
"We have more squeaky wheels in the newer residents, who tend to complain when they see something they don't like," Todd notes.
In the largely Hasidic community of southern and southeastern Crown Heights, meanwhile, demand is also high, but for new construction.
At least 10 new condo projects are set to hit the market within the next six months.
The apartments surrounding the worldwide Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters on Eastern Parkway are generally larger and less expensive than in many other areas of the city, accommodating big families.
"Crown Heights has always been behind in pricing," says J.J. Katz, an agent with Heights Realty, which specializes in the area.
"Almost all the people here are Hasids and have large families, and they can't afford to live in Park Slope or Brooklyn Heights.
"Nevertheless, condo prices have been rising sharply in the past couple of years, according to Katz.
Most new projects sell for around $325 a square foot, a significant increase from the $200 a square foot they fetched only a couple of years ago.And Katz says interest in new developments is keen.
That assessment is echoed by Mendel Drizin, the developer of the largest of the new projects, a 280-unit condo development on Crown Street between Albany and Troy.
"I am flooded with calls from all over the world," says Drizin. "People want to have them as time-shares for when they come to visit the Lubavitch community or they want to buy them for their children who already live in the neighborhood.
"The first phase of Drizin's project, with 94 units, will be completed in the spring. He expects to sell the apartments in the seven-story property for around $350 a square foot.
And he is not concerned about other new buildings coming to the market at the same time, counting his amenities -- including a ground-floor shul and gym -- and location as more valuable than the competition.
"This is the center of Crown Heights," Drizin says. "After you get past the fourth floor, you can see Brighton Beach on one side of you and the Manhattan skyline on the other."
The Lost Crown Heights
Once a Reform Synagogue; this beautiful Building still stands on Kingston Avenue revealing the past of this beautiful neighborhood.Thursday, November 30, 2006
The Lost Crown Heights
Lefferts and Kingston
Eastern Parkway and Kingston(Notice the crowns on top of the brownstones that have since been removed, if anybody can shed some light as to why?)
Brooklyn and Union Carroll and Troy Condos
After a cash payoff to the next door neighbor, the developer’s finally got their way and will be building condos on this lot. No word yet on the estimated completion date, however, given that the demolition hasn’t started, they are more then a year away from completion. Any word on the size or number of units?
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
OLD EASTERN PARKWAY MEMORIES
Eastern Parkway- Grand Army Plaza,
(Notice the horse and buggy on the bottom right.)
By: Ed Gruber
In 1905 my maternal grandparents, Fannie Schwager and Edward Wolff, were married in the then famous red room of the Willoughby Mansion at 667 Willoughby Avenue, Brooklyn. That same year they moved from Hall Street into a newly purchased brown-stone house at 347 Eastern Parkway, near Franklin Avenue.
Eastern Parkway, before it was broken up to make way for the IRT subway, was undoubtedly the loveliest street in Brooklyn. Tall stately trees formed a great natural arch over the Parkway. Benches instead of being securely cemented down, were portable so that one might move them into the shade. Drinking fountains were located every few blocks so that bike riders could refresh themselves.
Both side roads of the Parkway were used for horse drawn delivery wagons, while the center drive was reserved for carriages. Sundays brought the horse drawn pleasure carriages and occasional automobiles out in force. A favorite stopping-off spot on the trip to Prospect Park or Grand Army Plaza was the Bedford Rest, a large wooden roadstand at the corner of Bedford Avenue and Eastern Parkway, where beer and soft drinks were enjoyed at outdoor tables.
An outdoor movie was located just next to the Rest, where silent motion pictures could be observed in a large tent.
On warm evenings one could sit on the stoop and enjoy cool ocean breezes from Coney Island as crickets chattered. There were no apartment houses to be seen at the time and from the stoop on the north side of Eastern Parkway, on a clear evening one had an uninterrupted view of the revolving light at Sandy Hook, NJ.
Squatters populated the hilly area south of the Parkway and their goats would occasionally wander up and nibble at the hedges and wild daises. At a dairy farm located at the corner of Washington Avenue and Eastern Parkway, water was pumped from a well for the chickens and cows.
As the years passed, the subway was installed. Ebbets Field and the Brooklyn Museum were built. Electric street cars and then busses traveled across the Parkway at Franklin Avenue, and elsewhere. United Cigar stores, news stands, and all sorts of shops were built along Franklin Avenue. Union Temple was constructed near Grand Army Plaza and P.S. 241 was built two blocks south on President Street.
During my occasional visits back to the neighborhood, I think of Eastern Parkway of almost a century ago.
Monday, November 27, 2006
House Of The Day: President Street Mc-Mansion
Quick Facts: The two blocks of President Street between Kingston and New York Avnues were once known as "Doctors Row". Only people that lived on that block were allowed to drive through.
Looking Forward To Affordable On Crown Street
Does anybody know the number, size, and type of condos that will be built?
Sunday, November 26, 2006
What's Up With The Building On Corner President And Albany?
This building is perhaps the best example of wasted precious space in Crown Heights. The Building is approximately 12,000 square feet and it has been sitting vacant for years. Last year, there was a title transfer to someone by the name of Weinbaum; other then, that the owner refuses any comment about the future of the building.
Over Inflated On Carroll Street
Crown Heights
1259 Carroll Street
Fillmore
$899,000
This house had been sitting on the market for months. At $900,000, this is a perfect example of the 2006 over inflated prices. It obviously has not occurred to the owner that the frenzy over houses, in Crown Heights, has calmed down and the people won’t pay the crazy prices any more.
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Thursday, November 23, 2006
Empty Lot On Corner Union And Albany
(Please excuse the picture it was raining)I hope to bring you the history and future plans for this parcel of land and how it will develop as another brick in the building of the neighborhood.
In 1979 an organization called Center For The Jewish Culture purchased this lot with the plan to build a center for Judaism which would include a museum; however this plan never materialized and the organization then planned to sell the lot to Zalmen G. as he had in mind to to build homes. When this did not materialize either, Center For The Jewish Culture decided to sell the lot to Chassidic Discovery Center located at 305 Kingston Avenue.
Chassidic Discovery Center plans on building a meeting hall for the various tourist groups that come to Crown Heights.
A number of years ago, the sale was made and a price was agreed upon at the market value of that time; however there were issues with the deed that had to be worked out. Finally on 8-5-05 the deal was closed and the lot was sold for a mere $150,000.
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Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Crown Heights Real Estate History
Ebbets Field - Apartment Complex
Prior to the building of the large apartment complex; there was Ebbets Field.
Ebbets field is located in Crown Heights and is owned by a resident of the Crown Heights community.
Ariel View of Ebbets Field.
House Of The Day
NO MONEY DOWN ON PARK PLACE
Crown Heights
1368 Park Place
$660,000
Gmap
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Crown Heights
1368 Park Place
$660,000
Gmap
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Monday, November 20, 2006
Brownstones In Crown Heights
Example of some of the beautiful Brownstones in Crown Heights on Brooklyn Ave
Is There A Housing Shortage In Crown Heights?
This Beautiful 2 Family House on 1092 Carroll Street is for sale. The price is $729,000. There is no shortage of housing, there is a shortage of affordable housing. Click here
Crown Heights Real Estate
Welcome to the crown heights Real Estate Blog. This is a blog in which we discuss crown heights historic and future planning of Real Estate.
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