BENSONHURST'S PREMIER NEWS BLOG

Image courtesy of MasseyKnakal.com

Real estate giants Massey Knakal have put the space at 6601 18th Avenue up for sale. The 4,000-square-foot Bank of America branch location is currently under construction.

Located on the corner of 18th Avenue and 66th Street, this heavily-trafficked site can have a net operating income of $450,000.

Here’s what they write about the sale:

18th Avenue, also known as Cristoforo Colombo Boulevard, is undoubtedly one of the neighborhood’s most visible and heavily-trafficked thoroughfares, making it an obvious location for the popular national bank. Ground leased for 20 years, the property offers prospective purchasers a high yield, management free investment opportunity in the
heart of one of Brooklyn’s fastest growing middle-class neighborhoods. The current net operating income is approximately $450,000. Please contact us for more information.

Ah yes, and the asking price is a cool $9, 750,000. Who is in?

Image courtesy of Massey Knakal

You know that Food Dynasty market and Dime Savings Bank of Williamsburg shopping strip? It recently went on the market, according to the agents at Massey Knakal.

The East 8th block where the home is located

Seems like the city is selling off all of their unused properties. After the city auctioned off several vacant lots, they plan on selling private homes next.

On May 22, The Kings County Public Administrator will hold the auction of 16 Brooklyn properties. These properties were owned by people who died without writing a will. The auction will be held at the Brooklyn Supreme Court at 380 Adams Street at 1 p.m.

The home at 2247 East 8th Street is going for $450K.

The properties have minimum bids ranging from $275,000 to $1.6 million, according to Malcolm Carter, Senior Vice President of Charles Rutenberg Realty.

The last time a real estate auction for private homes was held was in June of last year.

New York City auctioned off 32 borough-wide city properties on May 10.

Most of the properties are unused vacant lots. There were some buildings up for grabs. One such is located in the Classon Point area of the Bronx.

A Gravesend 50ft X 173ft irregularly-shaped lot at Avenue X and Boynton Place was available for the minimum upset price of $780K.

This auction was the first of this type in six years. If every property sold, it would have net the city $6.7M in profits, according to WNCY.org.

Buyers were required to put down at least 20 percent of the asking price.

So far no word has been released as to which properties were bought and which remain.

Source: JMazzolaa via Flickr

The large abandoned site at 2300 Cropsey Avenue is set to hit the market. Swedbank, the current property holder, will soon begin taking bids on the space.  Swedbank is a Swedish bank that holds several defaulted mortgages, most of which they acquired from Lehman Brothers.

Alexander Gurevich, the initial owner of the 45,688-square-foot space planned to build a multi-functioning unit with underground parking, housing and office space, according to The Real Deal. However, he defaulted on the remaining $17 million loan balance and the property went into bank holding.

Gurevich’s ownership of the property is further complicated by his legal issues. In 2010, Gurevich was banned from selling condos or co-op units in New York for 3 years because he was accused of deceiving buyers in Manhattan’s Turtle Bay condo sale.

Associates at Massey Knakal Realty Services are also working to sell the site privately on behalf of Gurevich. Investors predict the site will go for $12 to $13 million.

Source: w00kie via Flickr

While we didn’t plan on doing another Coney Island story today, with summer on its way and Coney Island still in a transitional period, there’s simply an above average amount of chatter out there. With so many changes on the horizon, we want to give Bensonhurst Bean’s readers a heads up on what to expect at the beach this summer.

Coney Island developer Joe Sitt – who has become very unpopular with preservationists in recent years – says the suburban mall-like building erected by his firm Thor Equities on the Stillwell Avenue site of an historic structure he had demolished is only temporary, and is just one of many changes (shudder) in store for the People’s Playground. Continue Reading »

Front yard with vegetables by Violette 79 via Flickr

A Bath Beach homeowner has been awarded a grant from the city in order to help make her beautiful block look even better.

Sonia Valentin and her husband have been residents of their stretch of Benson Avenue, between Bay 11th Street and 16th Avenue, for 27 years. Recently, she began to notice and increasingly appreciate the well-kept front yards on her street, many of which are filled with flower gardens – the type that seem to bring the block to life with bursts of bright colors every spring. Continue Reading »

The proposed development site at 2658 Stillwell Avenue (source: Google Maps)

After years of making changes to Coney Island’s beach and amusement areas, city officials are looking to bring development to a space near the neighborhood’s long-overlooked creek. Continue Reading »

Houses facing Seth Low Playground (source: Michael Kirby Smith via New York Times)

[UPDATED 5:08 p.m.] As Southern Brooklyn bloggers, it sometimes seems as if we’re expected to criticize any attempt by larger, non-hyperlocal publications to curate, define or otherwise classify our turf – especially in terms of Real Estate.

However, even a locally crafted curmudgeon such as myself has to admit that the most recent profile of Bensonhurst in the New York Times Real Estate section last Friday (What, we’re not good enough for Sunday!? grumble grumble…) seems, for the most part, pretty fair. Continue Reading »

from wikimedia.org

It feels good to be last – especially if you rent an apartment in Bensonhurst.

Crain’s New York Business just published some of the findings of a city-wide survey on rent prices conducted by RentJuice, a San Francisco-based retailer of apartment marketing software for brokers and landlords.

The results?

While the average monthly prices quoted seem a little on the high side, we think the neighborhood rankings most likely reflect rental reality.

From Crain’s:

Apartment shoppers looking for rental bargains would be well advised to steer clear of West SoHo and TriBeCa. With average rents of $7,782 a month and $5,151 a month, respectively, those two neighborhoods top the list of most expensive places to live…Third on RentJuice’s list is Central Park South, where rents averaged $4,309 per month. At the other end of the spectrum, bargain hunters will fare best in Bath Beach, Brooklyn, which, with an average monthly rent of $1,242, boasted the lowest average. It was followed by Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, where rents averaged $1,283.

Here at Bensonhurst Bean, we’re pretty dumbfounded how, in this economy, the average young person just starting out – or a retiree living on a fixed income – would even have a chance of finding a place to live in this city.

Maybe the folks in Zuccotti Park should just occupy Corcoran?

For all you renters out there, what’s your rent like and are you happy with it?

This one’s for all owners of multi-family homes – are you having trouble covering your mortgage with such a low rent roll?

And finally, what do you think a fair rent would be?