Open Thread Wednesday

The scaffolding is down and the website is up at 50hicks.com

How soon before we see “price decreased” next to its listing on Streeteasy like all of the other houses in the nabe currently asking mega-millions but languishing on the market?

Any idea what it is listed at? Not that it really matters, since having a brownstone across the street from a falafel shop is obviously priceless.

And, since your posting sent me on a brief Zillow-go-round: is the following now a trend? Saw a listing for a $2.6m one bedroom in Dumbo, but with 3 baths, which seemed odd. Digging a little deeper, the apt also has two “home offices,” which look to be windowless, although the photo of one of those “home offices” shows a comfy looking bed, closets, etc. I believe in NYC bedrooms require at least one window…

I don’t know, just kind of blew my mind that even at that price point, people have to deal with those types of compromises in NYC, and that the realtors have come up with a dignified way of marketing it.

“Daddy, I can’t find my winter shoes.”

“Have you checked the closet in your home office?”

I didn’t say rich people don’t have lots of $$$ to park or launder.

I said asking prices in this neighborhood seem to be set too high and frequently drop significantly after a long time on the market. That’s not “patently off the mark” it’s demonstrably true. Go to Streeteasy or Zillow and take a look at the price histories.

Here’s a sampler:
15 Willow Street – listed Aug-2016 for $14.15 million, sold June-2019 for $8.99 million
59 Middagh – listed Sept-2018 for $11.5 million, still on the market for $9.5 million
51 Cranberry – listed April-2016 for $8.65 million, still on the market for $6.95 million
314 Hicks – listed May-2018 for $7.95 million, still on the market for $6.8 million

I went into the former Garden of Eden on Montague today and saw they were still bagging groceries in plastic bags. When I put my canvas bag down on counter then, I got an eye roll, then the cashier just handed me each of the items, one by one, so that I had to bag them myself.

So glad to see they’re stepping up and following the new law. Will see what happens when the fines start rolling in next month.

You cherry pick. There are plenty that sell quickly at or above asking, and in the thin air segment, it’s often a win-win if there are side deals.

Pricing properties is more science than art these days. Sure, maybe with COVID on everybody’s mind, someone could swoop in and do an all-cash deal for a mill. off, but that’s offset by weeks where 2 parties blow the roof off some listing or other. And yes, that sq ft metric is imperfect. But those gut rehabs aren’t “normal people” playing games with software and quickie walls – they’re architects who know what’s desired, and they’re more often right than wrong!

Name some townhouses that sold “quickly at or above asking” in the last 1-2 years in this neighborhood.

Also, you don’t know what you’re talking about with these gut rehabs. The folks who did 15 Willow spent $4.8 mil to buy the house in 2014 and they must’ve poured $1.5-2 mil into the reno. But they priced too high and because it sat, they carried the house for 5 years. After you subtract their interest, carrying costs and selling fees, they probably didn’t clear a huge profit even with the leverage. They could’ve made more in the S&P 500.

I’ve been to several stores this week and they’ve all used plastic bags.

Wow. So much for being a city governed by laws. Maybe it’s the Trump effect. We all just do what we want now.

Yes, there are always under-performers, and you’ve identified one of those. You think you’ve done “research” because you’ve looked at few listings. Here is what you’re missing – no doubt stemming from the kind of combo of bias and incredulity that we all share to some extent:

a) This is still a very small segment, and what may be a large part of it doesn’t even need ads. They’re not quite sure things to the developers, but they do NOT go the Corcoran route, either.
b) It’s a reality of the economy for all my adult life that some things really are not meant to sell at the first price a buyer is likely to see. That is, just as buyers often offer less than they’re willing to pay, you must be aware that someone pricing a property at $12MM might have $10MM as the knock down price from day 1.
c) The Times routinely lists properties with their ask & selling prices, and to my unscientific eye, those that moved only after the price was slashed seem balanced by ones where a bidding war must have taken place.

Start from axioms like “Developers aren’t stupid,” and you’ll realize that you’re just venting here, wasting energy trying to prove your thesis that listing prices are insane & un-gettable.

There IS no topic, but I really wonder if that hiatus (is it 20 years?) doesn’t mean that the new owners keep the name & not much else. (It’s arguable that they SHOULD, because so very much has changed since its heyday.) I was amused by the brouhaha about Peter Luger’s last year. Very little – even in “fine dining” – can be put “in amber” and hack it.

And for all that that location is convenient enough to folks living in the Heights, Dumbo or – crucially – DoBro, it probably is crippling. Brooklyn Fare moved to Manhattan, remember, and that stretch of Fulton St. will turn off the old for “image” reasons and the young because it fails any “funk test.” TGIF *was* a more natural fit. Brooklynites know – You can’t go home again!

Every single building on the west side of Hicks on this block has had major work done on it.

Alas, not the best of times to open a restaurant, considering all that’s happening…

Good points. And to be charitable, when the smoking ban was introduced 15 years ago there were probably a few straggler restaurants still allowing it, until the enforcement and fines kicked in. Perhaps it’s human nature that people will do what they feel they can get away with.

You still haven’t shown us any of those properties that went above ask. So who’s wasting energy here?

BTW, I’ve looked at every property with recorded sale price from ACRIS. (I only look at listings to ID asking prices.) But, feel free to keep up the ad hominem attacks disparaging my “research.”

I like how people comment on something you didn’t say…

A tower? Really? What, maybe 30 feet high?