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June 30, 2005
Brit None Too Fond of Bed Stuy
In an article on the impending bursting of the bubble in New York real estate, Sunday Times (UK) columnist Dominic Rushe manages to make a rather offensive comment about the borough which he is temporarily calling home:
I now live in Williamsburg, a horrifically trendy part of Brooklyn. I moved here because it was cheaper, slightly, than where I lived in Manhattan. Now warehouse properties here are selling for as much as flats in Tribeca. Prices are even going through the roof in Bed-Stuy, a horrible and inconvenient area of Brooklyn with some lovely buildings and a nasty crack habit.
Nice. Real nice.
Big Apple Homes Ripe for Fall [Sunday Times UK]
Comments
The truths hurts
Posted by: Anonymous at June 30, 2005 9:15 AM
Perhaps it would be more correct to say "much of which" is horrible and inconvenient. Or perhaps you prefer "some".
Posted by: Anonymous at June 30, 2005 9:25 AM
As a friend of mine has often said, real estate prices are more likely to fall if everyone was making excuses for why "this time is different than all others" and that prices can't go down. Less likely to see prices fall with everybody screaming about a bubble.
The psychology makes sense to me. If everyone is worried about a bubble, they will be more cautious before buying. If everyone is convinced that no bubble exists and that prices can't go down, then buyers get reckless, which increases the chances of a price decline at some point.
So, please keep the bubble talk alive! Scream it from the roof tops! You'll do all of us a favor.
Posted by: Anonymous at June 30, 2005 9:26 AM
Bubbles are for Bathtubs
Posted by: Anonymous at June 30, 2005 9:28 AM
Much Bed Stuy IS scary and nasty. The Brit didn't get that opinion out of thin air.
Posted by: Anonymous at June 30, 2005 9:43 AM
WHEN will it end?
Posted by: Anonymous at June 30, 2005 10:02 AM
If everyone were more cautious about buying (and NOT bidding 100K+ more than asking just to get something because everyone is hysterical, NOT cautious) then the bubble WILL pop since the bubble is born of hysteria where people are willing to pay anything and throw caution to the wind.
Posted by: Anonymous at June 30, 2005 10:10 AM
The Brit was refering to Williamsburg not Bed Stuy. I think he also wrong when he refered to Williamsburg as a place with a nasty crack habit. While Billyburg might have a crack issue, they definetly have a heroin problem. Move over lower east, Williamsburg is the heroin mecca of NYC.
Posted by: Anonymous at June 30, 2005 10:11 AM
Why not just say it's not yet hospitable to white folks? Much of Bed Stuy is filled with lovely, family oriented folks who active in their community and churches.
It's just that Bed Stuy is not ready for you infiltrators (ok, us infiltrators) yet, and you are not ready for it either. It's just taking longer to gentrify than you would like.
All this said, I also prefer a more racially harmonious and mixed neighborhood to live in, and those pockets of crack activity aren't fun for anyone (except the crackheads).
Posted by: Anon at June 30, 2005 10:12 AM
RTFA - He was referring to Bed-Stuy (notice the coma).
And unfortunatly he is right...
Bubble - smubble, no matter people ARE buying b/c they beleive that prices will only go up - but simple math says this is wrong (unless millions of people will be able to afford 2M studios)
Posted by: David at June 30, 2005 10:16 AM
I swear I read these things and I seriously wonder if any of these people have even been to Bed-Stuy, or any other place they go on and on about.
Posted by: Anonymous at June 30, 2005 10:24 AM
Unfortunately true for a lot of Bed Stuy. Plenty of nice buildings, plenty of nice people, but still has a problem with crime and drugs in many places. Not a slight to all of the nice families that live there at all, I'm sure they don't like that element either. And I don't think that for those who would consider moving there race is an issue, it is crime and safety.
Posted by: Anonymous at June 30, 2005 10:29 AM
"It's just that Bed Stuy is not ready for you infiltrators (ok, us infiltrators) yet, and you are not ready for it either. It's just taking longer to gentrify than you would like."
In other words, "WE ARE WHITEY. YOU WILL SUBMIT."
Whitey Plebe to Supreme Gentrification Commander: "I am sorry sir, but the Bed Stuy Gentrification Project is just not going on schedule. The black folk just aren't submitting to our attempt to bring high rents, higher real estate sales, $200 pocket book shops, and $3 lattes to the area. Several of them continue to listen to hip hop at loud volumes, do something they refer to as "tagging" and unwittingly and unannounced sit on the stoops of our fellow interlopers brethren. But rest assured, any insurgents will be subdued as we are bringing in a new Korean deli, two antique shops, and a few stained glass artists to provide a buffer zone for further expansion. Please tell Starbucks that they will be ready to establish a beachhead on Fulton Street by 2007. Long live the ownership society!
Posted by: WHITEY at June 30, 2005 10:49 AM
This time is different. I am buying a property in Bed Stuy for $895,000 and I expect the value to appreciate at least 20% a year for the next ten years. That means that my property will be worth $5.5 million in the next ten years. So go ahead and don't buy suckers.
Posted by: Rich Dad at June 30, 2005 11:43 AM
Sorry Anon but I have been to Bed Stuy many times, especially in my former career in Law Enforcement. I know from what I speak.... Bed Stuy still has lots of crime.
Posted by: David at June 30, 2005 11:51 AM
I think Rich Dad may be a broker ...
Posted by: Anonymous at June 30, 2005 1:03 PM
I think Rich Dad was being sarcastic.
Posted by: Anonymous at June 30, 2005 1:17 PM
I agree with Rich Dad. I think anyone who isn't buying now is foolish. No matter what the price or income, you can afford it and you will make money.
Posted by: Anonymous at June 30, 2005 1:40 PM
I'm a black person who recently moved to bed-stuy and like many newcomers wish there were more serices and less crime. I think what I take exception too is the writers tone. I have several white friends who feel pretty comfortable in the neighborhood because thay don't mind living around black people. They share the same concerns I do but also ahve, in their previous lives, been exposed to black people.
Posted by: Anonymous at June 30, 2005 1:50 PM
I agree Bed Stuy does have a crime and drug problem but, not like it used to... look at Ft. Green, Clinton Hill, hell Harlem!! People change and so do the times. I'm a black woman with family that just purchased a Brownstone in Bed Stuy not because it was "the new hot place", but because I love the area. When I moved to NY five years ago I moved to Bed Stuy in a Brownstone and feel in love. I married and convinced my new husband (who is in finance) to buy in Bed Stuy... He was reserved and scared to do it but, now he see's the light:) We weren't crazy enough to go out a pay 900,000 for a Stone in the Stuy (even though it almost happened) we were advised to be patient and 10 months later we closed on a sweet deal in the high 300's(UNHEARD OF THESE DAYS) We have work to do but, heck we can make it look like GOLD.
Posted by: nikki at June 30, 2005 2:42 PM
i found the british writer's comments to be nasty. don't a lot of areas have crime and drug problems? it may exist in bed stuy worse than in other neighborhoods, but i think things are much better than they used to be. i doubt the writer has ever been to bed stuy. sounds like bed stuy circa 1980.
also have to keep in mind that he was writing for a british audience. most of whom probably don't know new york that well, certainly not bed stuy and for whom he has to uphold new york's rough and tumble and crazy image because that's what they want to read about.
Posted by: pietro at June 30, 2005 3:19 PM
Sorry to disappoint the writer, but I know several people who have been mugged (one at gunpoint) in his "horifically trendy" neighborhood. Ditto in Fort Greene, Clinton Hill... Unfortunately crime is everywhere.
Posted by: Anonymous at June 30, 2005 3:34 PM
Those brits!!!
Unfortunately there is some truth to what he's saying its just his tone and the way that he condescendingly puts it that is dissappointing. Maybe if the drug of choice for the druggies in Bed-Sty was heroine then he wouldn't have been so harsh.
Lets face it Bed-Sty is just like every area in Brooklyn (including his W'Burg)it has its good areas and its shady parts. We all stick mostly to the nice parts and only go to the other parts when we really have to.
Nikki I too was VERY close to buying a BEAUTIFUL place on Macdonough $629,000 well preserved details HUGE and a lot of floors but i settled for our place in Lefferts Gardens which was a little over what you paid. Smart move on your part and yes patience is all it takes.
Even though we can afford a place thats going for $1.5 million I convinced my husband not to make that move. He smiles every time he walks in and not having to deal with tenants and having more money in his pockets. I prefer what we have now plus a wonderful vacation beach house in the tropics over anything going in the millions.
Posted by: Ewura-Abena at June 30, 2005 5:20 PM
Uhh - NO, Bed Stuy isnt like every other place in Brooklyn and yes crime is everywhere but it there is MORE of it in Bed Stuy - then in Heights, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Bay Ridge, Park Slope, and quite a few other areas. YES it is better (much better) but the prices reflect that the problem is solved and it is NOT. And yes other neighborhoods have worse crime then Bed Stuy but they dont have 900G houses. The point isnt that Bed Stuy is the crack infested war zone of the Dinkens Administration - its that it has entirely too much crime to sustain such high housing prices (and that the fact it is reflects a bubble - i.e. market conditions not reflecting reality)
Posted by: David at June 30, 2005 6:03 PM
WHITE DEVILS.
Posted by: Anonymous at June 30, 2005 8:50 PM
oh just say GREEN DEVIL... cause that's what it's about. Let the brit say what he wants... you know people are still going to move to Bed Stuy cause we "newcomers" see the what others don't!!! Clinton Hill is real iffy...BUT YOU KNOW WHAT I'M GOING TO GET SOMETHING OVERTHERE TO...HEHE I would prefer to live in Bed Stuy least your neighbors try to know who you are. We are moving on a wonderful block "Macdonough" and if you all know Bed Stuy you know you can't go wrong on any block of Macdonough except btwn malcom x and stuy:) My next door neighbors on each side happen to be WHITE and they love the neighborhood. They were the one's who told me about the "community" for my children and are already trying to plan get togethers for next summer... So let the sleepers sleep. My investment for this two family will be 4x as much in the next 5 years. And the neighborhood will be mixed with people that WANT TO HELP THE COMMUNITY!!! So let the Brit stay in Britian... I guess he didn't talk to those british Couples that moved on Jefferson Last Summer.hehehehehehehe THEY SEEM REAL HAPPY!!!
Posted by: nikki at June 30, 2005 9:22 PM
The real estate market will go into a down cycle at some point. Anyone who paid over 500K for a house in Bed Stuy now during this Bed Stuy bubble will regret it.
Yes Bed Stuy has some lovely houses but so do many other Brooklyn neighborhoods. Bed Stuy has high crime and crack houses. Bed Stuy has more Housing Projects than any other neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Let’s assume that you only consider Brownstone Brooklyn and not the more suburban areas of south Brooklyn for living/investing.
The Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights neighborhoods are commanding the multi-million dollar price tags. You might assume Bed Stuy can reach theses prices soon. That would be an incorrect assumption. Both PS and BH do not have Housing Projects.
What is also important is that BH and PS have amenities that Bed Stuy will never have: the Promenade and Prospect Park, the restaurant/ shopping streets: Montague/7th Ave and now 5th Ave, good public and private schools, and multiple subway lines.
What does Bed Stuy have to offer that PS and BH do not have? Low prices and the G train.
As they say in Bed Stuy: let’s keep it real. Bed Stuy needs to remain an affordable neighborhood for the community that has lived there for decades.
If gentrifiers, which for this area is anyone spending over 500K, move in and inflate the prices competing against each other, then it will only result in a burst in the Bed Stuy bubble.
Posted by: Anonymous at June 30, 2005 9:25 PM
I bought a great house in BedStuy and I love it. Our neighbors are great and we can comfortably afford our house. I am a lawyer and my husband is a midlevel executive. We have money to vacation, time to play with our child and extra money to spend on good bottles of wine and a decent car. The people I think will be sorry are those that have paid over a million dollars to live in Clinton hills or those struggling to afford Brooklyn heights. Being house poor can't be fun. I think people will continue to move to bedstuy if the price stay reasonable and allow all of us buppies and yuppies to have the things we like: food, wine and vacations. Plus, unlike all the people we know who have bought houses this year we have paid off an extra 30 thousand on our mortgae this year and saved about 20 thousand (we can afford private school when the time comes).
Posted by: tisha 571 at June 30, 2005 10:36 PM
Bed-Stuy covers such a huge area hard to dismiss whole neighborhood as 'crack invested' or inconvenient.
Area is larger than BkHts, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Boerum Hills put together. So to say
BkHts doesnt have projects while Bed-Stuy does is bit misleading. Plenty of projects within walking distance to Promenade.
Blocks of Bed-Stuy are great and for sure some very troubling blocks also.
Posted by: Anonymous at July 1, 2005 8:52 AM
lol! that says a lot more about those stereotypical and ridiculous entitled imperial british attitudes than it does about anything else.
i also like how he lives in horrifically trendy billyburg --- oh, did he move there accidently? hilarious!
Posted by: mrnyc at July 1, 2005 9:40 AM
The article was superfluous, but that doesn't mean that Bed-Stuy isn't a landlocked, outer-Brooklyn pit that's swarming with poor people. Any neighborhood where my wife is too afraid to walk home from the subway stop after 9pm is a ghetto.
Posted by: Anonymous at July 1, 2005 9:55 AM
I have to wonder why people are so fond of beating up this neighborhood? I live in Bed-Stuy and find it to be a quiet beautiful area with new and great services opening up (still need more) and genuinely nice people. On all sides of us we have neighbors whose names we know, who have accepted packages for us during the day, watered our plants, we sweep and shovel in front of each other's houses, the list goes on. (In fact I'd so much rather live there than off of 7th Avenue or Smith Street - those areas have become so filthy!) I don't hink anyone is trying to say that as an area it's BETTER than other areas, just that it's a great place to live. But if declaring it a "ghetto" makes you feel better about yourself, so be it.
Posted by: Anonymous at July 1, 2005 10:09 AM
Imagine Bedford Stuyvesant being all white, with trolley cars running through it. Welcome to the Bed Stuy of 1899.
http://www.nyc-architecture.com/BES/BED-bedstuy_family_history.htm
Posted by: jk at July 1, 2005 10:50 AM
this conversation has become silly. the truth is bed stuy is a big place and the good people who live there are sick of the bum rap. labels are superficial. if a murder happens on nostrand and gates, does it matter that you live in clinton hill instead of bed stuy? you could be just as close to the murder living in clinton hill as elsewhere in bed stuy, but psychologically you feel more secure. that's a tenuous grip on reality.
afterall, it's in brooklyn, new york city, usa. where do you draw the line and when do people start caring about each other and stop looking the other way because it's "not my neighborhood?"
Posted by: pietro at July 1, 2005 11:55 AM
Why is what he saying so controversial. New York is at its lowest crime rate in 40 years. If the crime rate stays where it is over the next 20 years, then an investment in Bed Stuy will turn out to be golden. If, however, the crime rate rises (not all the way up to the mid 80s numbers but let's say to the early 90s numbers) Bed Stuy will become a TERRIBLE neighborhood to live in. And all those gentrifiers will sell there brownstones (at a loss) in the middle of the night like so many families did in the 70s.
Posted by: Anonymous at July 15, 2005 4:11 PM
Bedford Stuyvesant is a historical community, and will always be a historical community. Bedford Stuyvesant has it's issues, however so did the litany of communities in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Park Slope, Fort Green Clinton Hill, Cobble and Boreum Hill section of brooklyn were dilapadated, infested with drug addicts and dealer in the 70s, 80s and early parts of the 90s. In the 1960 Atlantic Ave. in the vicinity of Brooklyn Heights were inudated with prostitutes/street walkers. During the turn of the century and up until the 1980s Lower East Side, Delancy street, Hell kitchens had a drug culture that were impermeable. All the sited Manhattan and Brooklyn vicinity are historical. The writing is on the wall historical, its a harbinger to come. No one thought that FortGreen/Clinton Hill would be desirable, however Brownstones homes are going for 1 millions dollars in FortGreen and Clinton hiil/Bedford Stuyvesant area. I should know I brought two Brownstones in Bedford Stuyvesant, now called Clinton Hill and Stuvyesant Height, both under 250,000 in 1999. The individuals that are underminding and belating Bedford Stuyvesant, will be the same indiviudals that will be renting to me for $2,000 for a duplex apt in Clinton hill/Bedford Stuyvesant and Stuyvesant Heights in another 3-5 Years. Brooklyn is changing and Bedford Stuyvesant is part of the Picture. Atlantic Yard, Navy Yard and other projects will transform Brooklyn. Realty is Bedford Stuyvesant is no longer a ghetto. Much
Posted by: Marty at July 28, 2005 2:56 AM
hi to all
Posted by: xanax at August 16, 2005 12:45 PM
hi to all
Posted by: xanax at August 16, 2005 1:54 PM
The Block Gates Between (Nostrand And Bedford) is Very Sad From Start to Finsh The Blcok starts off nice looking til i got to the coner of Nostrand where i thought this huge buiding was a hotel where i Seen All these Blood Dudes Standing on the coner Smoking Weed Playing Dice and disrespcting all the young females.
Posted by: Lisa at May 31, 2006 8:06 PM
Bedford And Gates And Nostrand Is crackhead Island They Fight At Different times of the nights climbing in people windows sleeping on the side walk and pissing in the street and there are many young Bloods who take young girls to there house along with many friends
Posted by: Tonya at May 31, 2006 8:12 PM
Let's take a brief moment and review. Neighborhoods don't create crime, the residents do. So whether they are black or white, green or purple, everyone can do their best to help combat crime and create alternatives within their repsective races. In fact, the "nice families" in Bed Sty can likely afford to remain there once the prices climb a bit more as I am sure they are working on going to college and retaining solid jobs. Quite frankly, I am perfectly fine with "gentrifying" an area with education, culture, employment, etc etc etc. If that means that a certain element are pushed out, so be it. That element is what is causing crime.
Posted by: Anonymous at January 26, 2007 11:54 AM
face it if you live in bed stuy you live in the ghetto
Posted by: chesture at February 20, 2007 4:23 PM
Lets stop with the stupidity of race talk. I lived in Do Or Die from 77-97 & I visit my parents every year, and when I do so I still go to all the old hang-outs with the crew. It has nothing to do with race, if you look like a punk most likely you'll get punked, its whatever this Puerto Rican did alot of fighting to let 'em know so to speak...my point is just this...if you don't like Bed-stuy & it's history pack up yo shit & get the hell on back to manhattan...Bed-Stuy is beautiful living there is a priveledge look up it's history...
BROOKLYN STAND UP!!!
Posted by: JK (Just Knowledge) AO. TTS.. at March 30, 2007 11:23 PM
Hmm... I never noticed the boys on the corner of Nostrand and Gates were bloods. I never pay attention to them. Why would you? I have lived in Bed-Stuy since I was a little girl, I've moved to Manhattan and back. Its nice, but they should've opened the bistros and sushi restaurants a long time ago. As for paying almost a million for a house?!?!? In Bed-Stuy? HA! I would never. Maybe in the Gowanas.... or Dumbo.
Posted by: Anonymous at July 30, 2007 11:50 AM
Tell me about Quincy St. between Nostrand and Gates. Anyone know this area? There block, like the area generally, is an odd mix of middle class professionals, working class folks, and seemingly unemployed or underemployed folks.
I did hear Nostrand and Gates is particularly dangerous.
Posted by: rob at August 1, 2007 12:38 AM
this is all very confusing. i would like to understand bed-stuy area better, but have only been there a couple times. looked at a place yesterday on halsey and throop. of course beautiful building, but how is this area? walking from the nostrand and macon stop i know i wouldn't be comfortable after eight. but how about getting off at throop stop and walking? i would love to hear some objective information.
Posted by: guest at October 8, 2007 11:28 AM
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