Housing prices:
2 BR condo: $450,000–$550,000
Brownstones: $550,000–$1.2 million
1 BR rental: $1,300–$2,000 per month
3 BR rentals: $1,800–$2,700 per month
Demographics:
Total population: 135,559
White: 7,423
Black: 98,497
Hispanic: 26,065
Household incomes:
$10,000–$24,999: 35 percent
$25,000–$49,999: 26 percent
$50,000–$99,999: 23 percent
Above $100,000: 17 percent
If you liked what you saw in Bedford-Stuyvesant three or four years ago but decided against buying a brownstone there because you couldn’t keep up with the prices, it’s time to hop the A train — and bring your bargaining skills.
“Prices have leveled off,” said Tim Hamm, a broker from Corcoran. “There was a period a couple of years ago where the prices were going up every month.”
Other brokers agree the market has tilted in favor of buyers.
“Three or four years ago, it was a seller’s market, but you don’t see that now,” said Denise Cherry, a real-estate agent who lives and works in the neighborhood. Cherry speculated that houses are not selling as quickly because the market is flooded with brownstones.
Those homes are luring young people and families, who once stopped in Fort Greene or Clinton Hill, deep into Bedford-Stuyvesant in central Brooklyn. The newcomers are concentrated within the historic district known as Stuyvesant Heights — the area just north of Fulton Street and straddling Macdonough Street between Tompkins Avenue and Stuyvesant Avenue, as well as shorter stretches of Decatur and Bainbridge streets — and other nearby blocks with good housing stock, easy access to the subway, safer streets and new businesses.
Prices in Stuyvesant Heights might seem high by historical standards, but they are still a steal compared to Park Slope or Cobble Hill.
A three-story house in good condition will fetch $700,000 to $850,000. At the high end, $1-million homes are not unprecedented, though they are rare. Fixer-uppers start in the high $500,000s.
For those willing to live farther from the A/C subway on Fulton Street, prices can be $30,000 less.
The market is ripe for renters too. Floor-through one- and one-and-a-half bedrooms go for about $1,300.
If these sale and rental prices seem low, they are still about twice as high as in 2001, before the first wave of real-estate excitement crashed and swept away the neighborhood’s hardscrabble image.
“Bed-Stuy is acceptable to mainstream Brooklynites and Manhattanites now,” said Peter Schubert, senior director at Massey Knakal Realty Services.
The buzz about Bedford-Stuyvesant has traveled well past the banks of the Hudson River.
“I heard really good things about Bed-Stuy,” said Wendy Williams, who moved to the neighborhood from California for a professorship at Long Island University.
“It feels like Oakland on the East Coast,” she said about the mellow pace and the friendly neighbors that were easing her transition into Brooklyn.
People are boasting about the commercial turnaround, too. Stores and businesses lagged behind the arrival of new residents, as would be expected, but cafes, restaurants and shops are moving in.
In particular, the coffeehouse crowd is well served with places like Bread Stuy on Lewis Avenue providing coffee, sandwiches and pastries. The management encourages lingering by providing the ubiquitous Wi-Fi service, as well as several chessboards.
“It’s a good gathering place,” said Maya Vaughn-Smith, lured from Harlem six months ago by tree-lined streets and the prospect of having her own backyard.
Bread Stuy occupies a part of Lewis Avenue between Macdonough and Decatur streets that might foreshadow the future of the neighborhood. It shares the block with the popular “international fusion” restaurant Petit Bassam, a bookstore and an art gallery.
Common Grounds on Tompkins Avenue and Bushbaby on Fulton Street are two other gourmet coffeehouses in the vanguard of gentrification.
For those who feel like burning off some energy, rather than drinking it up, the YMCA opened a new branch on Bedford Avenue that won the 2007 Building Brooklyn Award.
But there is still a ways to go. Nightowls are starved for local outlets, although Solomon’s Porch, a restaurant with live music six nights a week on Stuyvesant Avenue, is a beacon.
A couple of bars aren’t the only things the neighborhood lacks.
“There are very few amenities,” such as banks and Laundromats, said Vaughn-Smith.
Those necessities are on their way.
“There are things going on right now that will have an effect on the upside on Bed-Stuy,” said Schubert, who is the chairman of the local business improvement district.
Several city actions — among them, a rezoning of the southern part of the neighborhood, a tax-abatement program, and a new business improvement district — are fostering more construction and business growth, according to Schubert.
Other demographic shifts point to Bed-Stuy’s evolution.
The median family income was more than $33,000 in 2005, an increase of more than $6,000 since 2000. Crime, long a problem in Bed-Stuy, is down by more than 64 percent since the early 1990s, according to statistics from the 79th Precinct.
The changes, especially the drop in crime, are positive signs to long-term residents, but they feel pressured by it too.
“If we moved away, we’d never be able to come back,” Thomas Muzlac said, talking about the family of seven that he raised in prime Bed-Stuy territory on Macdonough Street.
©2008 The Brooklyn Paper
By submitting this comment, you agree to the following terms:
You agree that you, and not BrooklynPaper.com or its affiliates, are fully responsible for the content that you post. You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening or sexually-oriented material or any material that may violate applicable law; doing so may lead to the removal of your post and to your being permanently banned from posting to the site. You grant to BrooklynPaper.com the royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such content in whole or in part world-wide and to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or later developed.
RSS feed
Enlarge this image
Enlarge this image
Enlarge this image
Print this story
digg
del.icio.us