14 Townhouses, After Slow '06, Go Gangbusters
When Jim Cornell and Leslie Marshall decided to hike prices at the 14 Townhouses at the beginning of February in the face of reports of slow sales, it looked a little crazy to an outsider observer. After all, as far as anyone knew, there hadn’t been a sale in months. The hikes, in retrospect, were…
When Jim Cornell and Leslie Marshall decided to hike prices at the 14 Townhouses at the beginning of February in the face of reports of slow sales, it looked a little crazy to an outsider observer. After all, as far as anyone knew, there hadn’t been a sale in months. The hikes, in retrospect, were brilliantly timed. According to yesterday’s Brooklyn Eagle, February turned out to be a “record month” for the project, with the result that only one of the townhouses (the model house) remains unsold. Number 269, for example, one of the houses whose price was jacked from $2.75 to $2.9 million is now in contract.
The back-story is pretty interesting. When the houses hit the market early last year, there were three quick sales. Then, for eight months, nothing. Cornell and Marshall pulled the listings towards the end of 2006, rephotographed them, and then threw a big relaunch party in mid-January. They then proceeded to sell ten of them over the next couple months, three to Brooklynites, five to Manhattanites, one to a Greenwich family and one to Chicago family. Frankly, we’re glad to see that the market ultimately rewarded a developer for having some vision and cojones. It also shows that brokers are not a commodity product and that a good one can be worth the price.
269 State Street IN CONTRACT [Corcoran] GMAP
Price Hike At The 14 Townhouses [Brownstoner]
14 Townhouses Update: Slow Going, At Best [Brownstoner]
12:11 wins the award for most ignorant post of the week!!!!!
thanks for the laugh!
Sorry, 12:11PM, 7:08 is right. Manhattanites have been fueling this Brooklyn renaissance for the past 15 years. 🙁
Please, 7:08pm, do you really need to use that tone with me? I feel sorry for your coworkers and spouse or partner who have to conduct discussions with you day in day out, with you using that tone. It’s just really rude and does not sound terribly intelligent or adult.
Since there ARE stats to support what I’m saying, like the recently reported 22% increase in prices in Brooklyn real estate in 2006, and the fact that these townhouses all sold to people from Manhattan and elsewhere, AND that pretty much every real estate expert in NYC is saying this, I can state with confidence there has been a marked increase in buyers who traditionally only would have ever bought in Manhattan in the past, now buying in Brooklyn. If you want to argue that the exact same number of Manhattanites are buying in Brooklyn now as they were ten years ago, go ahead. But please do provide links for stats to back up your argument.
11:21 you are a bit of a fool. WHO exactly do you think, for the most part gentrified cobble hill, park slope, boreum hill, etc?
uhh…say it all with me….MANHATTANITES.
don’t mean to be rude, but you really don’t have a clue if you think manhattanites are now beginning to come to brooklyn, as you suggest. where have you been for the last 20 years?
The tastes aren’t “changing”. There’s just a new wave of buyers now. The Manhattanites, which are the ones able and willing to pony up the bigger money to buy a house, have always preferred newer, cleaner, hipper more “luxury” modern properties. Before they usually did not choose to buy in Brooklyn, and now they do, more and more. But the traditional brownstone buyers are still out there, too.
Oh my God! Ten townhouses sold for over $2 million on a single block in Boerum Hill in just a few months?!?!?!
So much for real estate in armageddon in Brooklyn….
Sylvia is not going to like this! She going to go ape shit over this news!
“(too close to downtown brooklyn)”
Is that a drawback anymore? What with 110 Livingston, Oro, etc, going in, plus the development of Albee Square into a mixed condo/commercial space, it seems that downtown Brooklyn will have plenty of its own appeal in the next few years…
“(too close to downtown brooklyn)”
Is that a drawback anymore? What with 110 Livingston, Oro, etc, going in, plus the development of Albee Square into a mixed condo/commercial space, it seems that downtown Brooklyn will have plenty of its own appeal in the next few years…
I disagree with the either/or proposition of your argument about people’s taste changing from vintage houses to contemporaries, anon 3:10. I’ve expressed great admiration for these 14 Townhouses buildings, and I LOVE great, new, modern work. But I live in an 1870s brownstone that’s dripping with Victorian details that will be carefully conserved, and I love that, too. I love quality and cool, and both styles can have it in spades. I also love eclecticism–which, by the way, was the prevailing idea when most of these late 1800s b-stones were built in Brooklyn; note their crazy combinations of styles. As such, we’re honoring that aesthetic by decorating not with Victorian periodista furniture, but with designer-crazy stuff from the 50s, sixties, and seventies–think 70s coke palace–and I think the juxtaposition is wicked cool. There shall be no doilies or 17-color paint schemes.