Looking For A Townhouse In Great Original Condition?

Posted on September 20, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

Every now and then I come across a place that’s just special. This weekend I went through one of those places. I can’t mention the address or give too much detail, because as a licensed agent I’m not allowed to advertise other agents’ listings, but if you’re in the market for a great old house with no issues (other than being old), then contact me – jay@beatingupwind.com and I can tell you more about it.

This place is a nice, big, wide legal 3 family with a C of O from the 1940s. The use and configuration still conforms to the C of O since the same family has owned it for the past 60 years and they didn’t chop it up. It’s two floor through 2 bedroom apartments over a duplex. That means it is not an SRO and has no Certificate of No Harassment issues. It also seems to be clean from HPD’s perspective.The block is also completely charming and quiet with some architecturally interesting buildings.

On the downside the ground floor apparently needs a gut renovation (I wasn’t able to see it) and the two kitchens I saw appear to be from the 1970s. The bathrooms appear to be from the ’30s/’40s. Despite the age of the kitchens/bathrooms everything was in remarkably good condition… Just a bit “retro”.

The other potential downside is that it’s in a neighborhood that doesn’t have a lot of services. It’s not a hip/bustling area – it’s a sleepy bedroom community. That may actually be an advantage if you want a peaceful quiet place to live and don’t mind Fresh Direct. Not being in a hot neighborhood means the price is lower. The same townhouse in Mount Morris Park or South Harlem would probably go for 50% more money.

I think the owners are more or less being realistic on price (asking is $295/sq. ft.) – so it’s a place you could actually get. On top of that, being 3 family can be a huge help since the rental income makes it easier to qualify for the mortgage (assuming they let you count the rental income).

30 West 120 Sells For $2.5M – $568/sq. ft.

Posted on September 14, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

Less than a month ago I was a little worried about the lack of high end sales in Mount Morris Park. Well, there’s no longer a need to worry… 30 West 120th (across the street from Marcus Garvey Park) sold on August 29th for $2.5 million. That breaks just about all the sales records since the downturn in the economy 3 years ago.

The house is “just” 18 feet wide (narrow for a house selling over $2M), but it’s roughly 60 feet deep so it has approximately 4,400 sq. ft. That means the new owner paid about $568/sq. ft. – so not only was the $2M barrier broken, but the $500/sq. ft. barrier was broken as well.

Curiously, for such a high price, there’s a rental building on one side of the house and a shell on the other side. And with all the 5th Avenue traffic going around the park it’s not a particularly quiet location. This is good news for some of the 20 and 25 footers on more the coveted blocks just off the park – they should be able to go for even higher prices.

However, the house does have a rather good provenance… It was purchased by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 2002 for $525K. Between 2005 (the filing date) and 2009 (the sign off date) he did a gut renovation. The estimated cost of the renovation was $375K + $7,500 for sprinklers, but that was the estimated cost – the actual cost may have been substantially higher. Given that he was renovating at the height of the market it could very well have been a $1M+ renovation.

You can see from the pictures below that the renovation was pretty conservative – no daring architectural features or anything, but still quite nice. They say townhouse buyers like original detail. There isn’t all that much original detail left in the house, but the traditional nature of the renovation must have resonated with the buyer…

Another thing to note is that the house was single family. That means the owner was buying a degree of luxury – a 4,400 sq. ft. home. We’ll also have a quadraplex when our renovations are done, but it will only be about 3,200 sq. ft. – definitely a nice size, but not nearly as luxurious as 30 West 120. I’ve seen this in the comps before – single and two family homes often sell for substantially more than 3+ family homes.

This sale should solidify the top end of the market and hopefully it will get hesitant buyers to pay a bit more. I’ve always thought Harlem townhouses were undervalued in comparison with Brownstone Brooklyn – let’s hope that changes 🙂

After I finished this post I started thinking about the effect on shells (like the one next door). If 30 West 120 can sell for $560/sq. ft. subtract $250/sq. ft. for a nice gut renovation, then subtract say $100/sq. ft. to reimburse the new owner for the trouble of going through renovation and you still have a value of $200/sq. ft. – and that would be if it were a total shell (like ours was). The shell next door doesn’t seem like a total shell, so it could go for even more.

Of course one comp doesn’t make a trend, and rehab mortgages are getting harder and harder to come by, but as the high end prices go up so too will the prices of shells – and the changes on the low end will seem even more dramatic since renovations are a somewhat fixed cost. $200/sq. ft. is about 50% higher than the $125 to $140/sq. ft. I would have thought was an average shell value in the past (for a shell needing a total gut including structural work). 50% is a big jump.

The Mess In Our Back Yard

Posted on May 17, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

We knew our back yard was a bit of a mess. It was clear that when they were renovating the building adjacent to ours that they had just dumped a bunch of garbage in our back yard. We figured there was about a foot of garbage back there…

On top of that when a friend of ours (who does gardening for a living) saw the garden he said the plants that were going in it were rather insidious – that we should kill them with RoundUp and then put black plastic over the entire garden for a summer to try to kill them.

There’s so little in our place there aren’t many surprises, but it seems like every time there could be a surprise we’ve got one. The back yard isn’t going the way we thought it would… They’ve started removing the garbage – and surprise! There’s concrete under everything…

You can’t quite tell, but the retaining wall on the side has about 2 1/2 cinder blocks in it – so it’s about 20″ high (plus the cap stone). And most of the “debris” is actually mostly dirt and rocks. I still don’t know how we have so many river rocks in the middle of Harlem, but there they are.

Our plans just call for removing the debris. It doesn’t mention anything about removing concrete – so we’ll have to work that out with the contractor since we don’t want a concrete back yard! That said, we don’t have to worry about insidious plants growing in a concrete back yard…

The other question is how do we integrate those huge rocks into our landscape design? I was really thinking of going a different direction… But we’ll figure something out. Dan says we should look at Japanese garden designs.

We Have A Roof & A View! (Sorta)

Posted on May 7, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

The roof, while far from done, got put up Friday – well enough to stand on at least…

The next thing we have to figure out is whether the slope of the roof will be uncomfortable as a deck. It changes by about 7 inches every 10 feet. We could do three level areas with one step between each, or we could live with the slope. We went to Home Depot this afternoon and got some plastic lawn chairs and plan on sitting up there this weekend to see whether it bothers us. (Anyone want to join us for a beer on the roof?) If we want to do three level areas we’ll need to raise the railings a bit to compensate for the additional height.

The roof lets us get a peek at our view. While we’ve stood on the roof of the apartment building next door, we’ve never actually seen the view from our own roof until today. It’s a story lower than the apartment building, and the view isn’t quite as good – it’s a bit obstructed…

(Click picture to see bigger version).

We can see midtown a bit. Citicorp is visible, and from the right angle the top of Empire State is visible, but much of the Midtown view is obstructed by the apartment buildings on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd. And being Harlem it’s off in the distance anyway. Here’s a blow up of the best part of the view…

(Click for bigger version).

I gotta say though… The fact that our view is so precarious makes me want the boundaries of the Mount Morris Park Landmark District expanded so our neighbors to the south can’t build up and block our view. Thing is, even if they’re landmarked they could still build up a little and block things for us – by adding a bulkhead like we’re doing…

Honestly though, the most interesting thing on the horizon we see when we turn around and look across and down the block a bit at The Greater Metropolitan Baptist Church (originally a German Lutheran church)…

The nicest part of the roof deck is that it’s less of a fish bowl than the back yard. There’s a bit more privacy than the back yard ’cause it can be seen by fewer windows…

Construction Doorways

Posted on May 4, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

Bricked up doorway for workmen in Harlem townhouse One interesting detail we’ve seen in a number of Harlem townhouses that have exposed brick walls are old, original, bricked up doorways between the townhouses (see photo on right).

The old buildings you see in Harlem were built by speculative developers during a real estate boom (yes, that concept is nothing new). Developers would buy a parcel of land and sub-divide it by putting a number of townhouses up at once. Generally all of them would be identical, or just differ in minor ways.

Because they were building several buildings at once they’d put in passageways so the workers could go from one house to the next quickly. Then towards the end of the project all the doorsways would be all bricked up before the walls were plastered.

We have one of these on every floor. The lintels are in a variety of conditions. Originally they were wood. Some are in good condition, others are rotten and need to be replaced. One of them had the wood pulled out and brick put in (because it was in a kitchenette – which was a good thing since that’s where a major fire started).

Our doorways will still be visible when we’re done since we’re leaving the party wall as exposed brick. The old doorways will give the brick walls a little more character and may even prompt a question or two from observant guests.