I took a walk through 28 2nd Place the other day, the wide and centrally located Carroll Gardens brownstone that we hope to convert to roomy three- (and one four-) bedrooms. The architect who worked on the floor plan for us was with me, as well as a general contractor who is very experienced with [...]
In the heyday of 21st century real estate speculation, a house (or condo or co-op) was seen more as an investment than a home; hence the flipping phenomenon that led to inflated prices and, ultimately, increased vacancies. Many folks now feel trepidation about purchasing a property because they’re worried about the soundness of the investment; [...]
When a commercial tenant scouts out a new space, the landlord is often willing to make massive changes to suit the client, because it’s expected that the commercial tenant is in it for the long haul and willing to sign an extended lease. It’s called build-to-suit, a re-envisioning and reorganizing of a space based on [...]
Real estate blog giants Curbed and Brownstoner have both written about our efforts to change the face of real estate development in Brooklyn. Comments, naturally, ranged from the celebratory to the skeptical, but we generally liked what we heard, including, “We need to build new business models, or update old ones, and you may be [...]
We want to introduce you to the architects we’re working with at MyHome, Brooklyn: veterans of Brooklyn creation and construction whose playfulness, resourcefulness and attention to detail have led to myriad beautiful, and beautifully one, projects. Dumbo-based Coburn Architecture has done everything from beach houses to brownstones. Tom van den Bout of NV/da, LLC mixes [...]
We know that many New Yorkers think the word developer has a bad connotation, conjuring up images of everything from eminent domain abuse to high rises looming over townhouses. The real estate boom and bust has eroded the public’s trust in developers. One of our goals is to restore that trust, or to create it [...]
Bob Dylan captured the spirit of Brooklyn Heights in his 1975 song Tangled Up in Blue. “I lived with them on Montague Street,” he wrote, “In a basement down the stairs. There was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air.” Okay, so the Heights isn’t known for being a hotbed of [...]
We keep hearing that now is the time to buy (of course, most real estate agents will say that no matter the economic climate). But fire sales and declining asking prices aren’t the only reasons to buy. The value of a property is affected by so many factors — the schools, the neighborhood amenities and [...]
