HOTD: The Common Courtesy of a Wrap-Around
We’re digging the look of this stately Victorian in Midwood Park. Located at 60 Dekoven Court (off East 17th Street), the three-story shingle looks to be in excellent original condition and has a killer porch to boot. From what we can gather from Property Shark, the same person has owned the house for the last…
We’re digging the look of this stately Victorian in Midwood Park. Located at 60 Dekoven Court (off East 17th Street), the three-story shingle looks to be in excellent original condition and has a killer porch to boot. From what we can gather from Property Shark, the same person has owned the house for the last ten years. We’re curious whether this location– East of Cortelyou Road and close to Brooklyn College–justifies the $1,600,000 price tag. Hopefully some Flatbushies can weigh in on that one.
Gracious Victorian Home with Wrap Around [Mary Kay Gallagher] GMAP P*Shark
12:18 – Fair point – I agree that they often overprice these unrenovated houses, I was just saying that it doesn’t always mean they couldn’t afford to renovate them or maintain them. Many of them just don’t care to do it. I live in one, am middle class and, have afforded to maintain it and do the renovation I wanted. I, like you, would not have paid $1.6mil for it unrenovated, however.
9:20pm, that’s very true, sometimes older people live with inconveniences because they have different standards. But they need to price their homes much lower then because dude, I’m not being super picky here. The other DP house I’m talking about needed another bathroom added upstairs because the “2nd bathroom” advertised was a tiny one badly cheaply done, added in the 70’s in the scary basement that was cheaply finished into a faux-wood-paneled, low-ceiling, den. The kitchen was not a funky cool 60’s one. I owned a house with the original 20’s kitchen cabinets and I never touched it – I loved it. But taste is taste. A kitchen that is cheap and crappy and dated communicates to buyers the owners didn’t invest much money in their property whether that was by choice or by circumstance, whichever. That’s all I was saying before.
6:14 – most houses in the rest of the country are wood frame and many are historical and somehow, someway, middle class people manage to afford them. I live in the neighborhood and I think a lot of the older people in the neighborhood, like my parents and grandparents, just don’t care if their kitchens are state of the art or their basements have full gyms, so they chose not to spend their money on these things. In fact, some of them actually think their 1960s kitchens are the cat’s meow, because that is the style that was in when they first started making it in the world. Same reason lots of older folks still like to wear their 1960s clothing, even those that could afford to go to the GAP and update their look.
It is so funny to me how this generation (mine) assumes that anyone who could afford to would redo their kitchens and baths every 5 years or so when they are perfectly functioning. This was not the norm for most generations and many in those generations actually think it is wasteful and silly to fix something that isn’t broken. A lot of these houses have not had these types of updates because they have had the same owners for a very long time and their owners are from a generation that would be embarrassed to say that a three story, 6 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath house “NEEDED a bathroom added to the upper floor.” 😉
9:13am, that’s not what we have witnessed when we go to open houses in DP. The homes I’ve seen did NOT have high quality updates done and yet the owners were certainly middle and upper middle class. One home (still on the market, all summer and all fall) was owned by a doctor, and they’re obviously people of some means and taste, but the kitchen and basement desperately needed a total gut renovation plus a bathroom added to the upper floor. Seeing that kind of thing doesn’t give the impression at all that these houses are affordable for the middle class to maintain. These people obviously maxed out their income on school for their kids, saving for retirement, and doing the basic repairs and upkeep for the house. But it was apparent that did NOT leave money left over for fabulous renovations. And it’s simply what people should be smart and keep in mind, when they see these homes.
saw the house today…man…what a piece. I can’t believe that they are asking 1.6…kitchen needs a total redo and, frankly, it’s just not a very nice house…bad flow, not crisp…very disappointed
I rented a house in Ditmas Park for two years, and found it breathtaking at first because of the reasons listed above (space, beauty, greenery). However there are drawbacks, and as has been said many a time, it’s not for everyone. In my opinion, it had many of the disadvantages of the suburbs (lack of nice restaurants, cafes, life being much easier if you drive) without the advantages (peace, quiet, cleanliness, less crime). Perhaps it was my bad luck to live in a noisy part of DP, but the constant rumble of the subway train and the street noise of Ditmas Avenue was stressful. We got lonely after a while too — neighbors although pleasant mostly kept to themselves, and my kids were usually the only ones biking up and down the sidewalks. We eventually decided to move back to Park Slope.
But the houses are lovely, I miss the space, and if you are a city person, I certainly would recommend moving there over moving to the suburbs.
This is my experience.
I have seen many instances where people bought in this neighborhood (with gov’t aid) in the early 70s, and these houses have never really been maintained. I do think it is because these families just had no idea how much it would cost to do so. Sure, there have always been families here who can maintain homes – they’re certainly not all falling down! But the point I’m making is the same point someome made about warning buyers today – these houses are not cheap to maintain. Someone today might think… oh, this is so much cheaper than that two family in PS or wherever… but it ends up being more than they can afford due to upkeep costs and lack of tenants to offset the mortgage. People buying now are the most affluent buyers here since the sixties… It will make a big difference in terms of how the neighborhood holds up in ten years. Also (except for those who choose the alumnium siding or worse yet, red or yellow brick path…), the majority of the new owners are sensitive to the architectural history of the neighborhood and are spending money on restoration. You see LOTS of insensitive 70s renovations out here often because that was the cheapest way to do it, and people coudn’t afford to do it right. People chose siding so they didn’t have to keep with the cost of maintaing a wood frame home. Those choices have degraded the neighborhood and it was because the owners could not afford to maintain their homes. The new, affluent owners are slowly repairing that damage.
I disagree, as I am sure many other the middle class people will disagree. They certainly can maintain these homes because they got them for so cheap. Most of these families they either have no mortgage or a very small monthly mortgage payment, probably much cheaper then what people are paying in rent.
Heck, I know a couple of them who own country homes….
Middle class people are not poor and middle class people in Brooklyn certainly are not poor…
Many people who are not maintaining these homes are the elderly (not all of them, I do not want to get in trouble!!!). They have lived in these homes for over 30 to 40 years and the homes just become too much work for them to take care of. The other group does not matter if you are rich or middle class is the group who where just not meant to own a home. Some people are just not cut out to own and maintain a large home.
While it is true that a lot of middle class families have lived in Victorian Flatbush for decades, the sad truth is that many of these families have not been able to maintain their houses due to the high costs of doing so. They were the buyers snookered in by the cheap price tags in the early 70s… many of the owners could not afford the upkeep and have let maintenance slide year after year. The new, more affluent buyers are renovating and restoring these magnificent homes, which were never intended to be maintained on a middle class income. They were built for the well-off. Yes, it means displacement for some long term families, but you could argue that these families were lucky to get into the neighborhood in the first place – when lots of wealthier families fled to the suburbs, bringing down prices to shocking levels. Now they are able to cash out for more than they could ever imagine. Of course this is not the case for every single family that bought into Victorian Flatbush 30 years ago, but it is a pattern you see again and again. It’s not ideal, I know, but it’s the truth.
As for developers – this is why the entire area needs to be a) rezoned and b) landmarked ASAP.