Real Estate

Would You Pay $1,475 a Month for This Prewar Studio in Flatbush Near Prospect Park?

If you can swing the rent, this studio has its advantages, including location and Art Deco details.

by Stephen Zacks

11/08/2018 0

Let’s be honest: Say you’re a single person making $55,000 a year, optimistically, doing OK, statistically, essentially what qualifies as the margins of low-to-moderate income in New York City. According to the traditional rent-to-income calculation, you don’t even qualify for this studio apartment at 2164 Caton Avenue in a neighborhood “safe to people with a reasonable amount of street smarts,” per the Google Brooklyn safety map.

That means the landlord is going to ask you for a War and Peace-size file with all of your income, taxes, and reams of private information, then likely reject you as too poor for probably the lowest price apartment you can find within an hour’s subway ride of the places essential for your work and life. And you’re one of the people supposedly gentrifying the place. Oh, and by the way, for maintaining the 40 units in this building, the rentier landlord is bringing in a tidy $900,000 profit, according to PropertyShark. Blame the artists!

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That said, assuming you earn the $73,000 the Department of Housing, Preservation, and Development recommends to rent this place, it has its advantages. Pretty nice parquet floors and other Art Deco touches, like a scalloped doorway. Three windows, including one in the kitchen, which is separated from the living space. Somewhat of a decent size for a studio. (It was built in 1937, right in the middle of the Great Depression.) An elevator in the building.

Right around the corner, Peppa’s Jerk Chicken, the very best jerk place in Brooklyn, if you can stand the fire. Cortelyou Road, with its food co-op and public library, and Prospect Park are nearby — though this neighborhood is not Prospect Park South, as the listing claims, but Flatbush.

Gregory Smith and Mateo Pobor of Citi Habitats have the listing; the asking rent is $1,475 a month. Worth it?

[Listing: 2164 Caton Avenue, Studio | Broker: Citi Habitats] GMAP