January 2008
January 31, 2008
Thursday Blogwrap
Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Photo by I like green.
Brooklyn-based Etsy Raises $27 Million in Fourth Round [Dumbo NYC]
Forbes: New York in Top 5 Most Miserable Cities [Gothamist]
On Beard Street: Swedish Family Seeks Members [Curbed]
Improvements at Boerum Hill Post Office? [GL]
NY Sun Grades Private Schools [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
A Tour of Cambridge [CH Blog]
Closing Bell: The Psychology of Pricing a House
Round numbers may be bad for business when it comes to selling a house, according to three profs from Cornell University. The current issue of The Atlantic Monthly picks up the story:
The authors showed their subjects a listing for a house along with various prices, and asked whether those prices seemed high or low. Precise prices like $391,534 were seen as cheaper than round ones like $390,000, even though the round prices were actually lower. The authors then examined more than 27,000 real-estate transactions on Long Island and in South Florida and discovered the same effect at work in real-life deals. In South Florida, having at least one zero at the end of the list price lowered the final sale price by about 0.72 percent compared with houses listed at a similar price, three zeros lowered it by 0.73 percent, and each additional zero lowered it another 0.39 percent.
Can any readers back this up with anecdotal evidence?
Primary Sources: Pound Foolish [The Atlantic]
Today on the Forum
Here are some of the items posted recently on the Brownstoner Forum:
Info Needed About This Wincroft Stove
What's the Best Site for Mortgage Calculations?
Need Help Valuing 242 Washington Avenue
Help Hanging TV and Doing Plasterwork?
Suggestions for Tenant Background Checks?
How To Find Out if Property Has Liens?
StreetLevel: Weather Up on Vanderbilt
As the pic above shows, the interior of Weather Up—the fancy new cocktail bar on Vanderbilt between Dean and Bergen that’s scheduled to open in a few weeks—is looking just about complete. The white tile motif has been extended to the outside of the bar (see photo on jump), and one of the business’s partners told Grub Street he wanted to make the former storefront church into something of a “jewel box.” Weather Up comes c/o one of East Side Company Bar's original investors, and Sasha Petraske (the mastermind behind Milk & Honey and Little Branch) is consulting on the bar’s drinks, according to an Eater report.
Cocktail Stirrings on Vanderbilt [Brownstoner] GMAP
ProHi Secret Bar Update [Eater]
Prospect Heights Cocktail Den Promises Back Garden, Oysters [Grub St.]
House of the Day: 10% Off at 155 Warren Street
A 10% price reduction might not sound like all that much, but when the original asking price was $8,750,000, as in the case of 155 Warren Street, it translates into "savings" of $875,000. Judging from the 134 comments this generated as a House of the Day in October, however, we're guessing that popular opinion will still be that the new number of $7,875,000 is still a pie-in-the-sky price. Given that it's still coming in at over $1,100 a foot, we'd tend to agree.
155 Warren Street [Brown Harris Stevens] GMAP P*Shark
House of the Day: $8.75 Million in Cobble Hill? [Brownstoner]
Condos of the Day: 134 St. Marks Place
It’s tough to beat this new Scarano-designed condo in the North Slope for proximity to Fifth Avenue retail and all the subway lines at Atlantic (not to mention that as new construction, it’s something of a rare bird in this neck of the woods). That said, buyers don’t seem to be falling all over themselves to ink deals here: The development’s been listed for a few months now and Corcoran's website isn’t showing any units in contract. The seven listings are running between $535,000 and $565,000 for the one-bedroom, one-baths; around $740,000 for the two units that top 1,000 square feet; and $995,000 for the biggest unit, a 1,352-sf two-bedroom, two-bath. 134 St. Marks’ pricing is similar to what units at the Crest and Novo were asking, and (for our money, anyway), 134’s location is a lot better—so we wonder why more of these aren’t in contract. (Market jitters? Uninspired interiors?) Anyone checked them out?
134 Saint Marks Place [Corcoran]
134 Saint Marks Place [Brownstoner] GMAP
Development Watch: 144 South 4th Street
Just down the block from our first apartment in Brooklyn, a ten-story residential building is in the early stages of development. Designed by Nataliya Donskoy, a Scarano protege responsible for the makeover of 140 Degraw Street, the structure is planned to include 75 units over 134,000 square feet. An adjacent existing building on the same zoning lot will be reborn as a commercial property with the off-street parking required by the apartments. This should be a doozy. GMAP P*Shark DOB
Inside Third & Bond: Week 22
Today the folks at The Hudson Companies try to put aside their worries about the economy and discuss all the marketing decisions that loom on the horizon.
Our demolition is done, we’re revising the pile design, bidding out the plans to subcontractors, and negotiating construction financing terms. We’re gearing up for the construction phase as we warily view all the ongoing economic indicators. While we appreciate that condo sales are still strong and interest rates are way down, we don’t feel the least bit relaxed. And it’s at this juncture of a project, that we begin to turn our focus to the next big thing in our project planning…..marketing.
“Marketing”—the very word probably brings major eye rolling to many a Brownstoner reader...
AY Demos: 626 Pacific Going; Ward Bakery May Be Next
Whether or not Bruce Ratner is actually sweating Atlantic Yards financing right now (on that subject, this Daily Intelligencer article by Chris Smith is a good read), it doesn't seem like anything's going to stop the bulldozers in Prospect Heights over the next couple of weeks. Here's what's set to fall:
1. 626 Pacific Street: Demolition is starting on this red-brick warehouse, which is right next to Casa de Goldstein. GMAP
2. Carlton Avenue Bridge: According to this week's ESD press release on Atlantic Yards construction activity, workers are going to begin demolishing the southern portion of the bridge. As shown in the pic above, the bridge is now completely blocked off. GMAP
3. Ward Bakery Building: The ESD says "mobilization for demolition" of the warehouse, where a section of the parapet collapsed in April, will begin over the next couple of weeks. Last year, there was an unsuccessful drive to save the building. GMAP
These are in addition to 647 Dean Street, whose last gasps we chronicled a couple weeks back.
Williamsburg’s Goody-Goody Greenbelt
The marketers behind a new Williamsburg condo called Greenbelt are really pushing the condo’s eco- and artist-friendly features. The Greenbelt team says the eight-unit building 361 Manhattan Avenue is expected to receive an LEED Gold rating and save around 46 percent of a standard building’s energy costs (its many green bells and whistles include a solar energy collector on the roof and a passive heat recovery system). The building is also going to have a 4,000-square-foot, nonprofit performing arts center on the ground floor. So it’s definitely got great credentials—but will it sell? The units are mostly two-bedrooms; the single, 710-square-foot top-floor one-bedroom is going for $599,000, while the two-bedrooms topping 1,000 square feet are going for between $759,000 and $815,000. The healthy sales at the green condo in the South Slope, 515 Fifth Avenue, certainly indicate that the market is receptive to eco-friendly builds—we’ll find out if that’s true