Realty Collective dishes Red Hook in The Real Deal

Look who's talking! Click here to read how I devalue the neighborhood I love. An excerpt:

Tina Fallon, an agent with Realty Collective — a brokerage that she said mainly represents buyers — observed that the only single- and two-family houses now selling in Red Hook are going for less than $1 million. 

"The $1 million mark seems to be the number buyers have a hard time going beyond," she said. 

She and her husband actually paid more than $1 million for a house in the neighborhood a couple of years ago. But she said the streak of sales priced in that range that began in 2006 has been cut short by the weakened market and by the fact that there was more high-end inventory for sale from 2006 to 2008. 

"There are still renovated properties on the market in excess of $1 million, but they're just not selling," Fallon said. "Renovated properties that come onto the market under a million — those are selling, and at prices very close to $1 million." 

After 2005, said Fallon, "the quality of the housing stock available improved" in Red Hook because fully renovated homes were coming on the market more readily. 

"Pre-2005, we had a market of 100 percent unrenovated properties," she said. "And renovated versus unrenovated makes all the difference in Red Hook." 

Note that I paid more than $1M for my house in Red Hook, making me either a) dumb, or b) cooler than you.

Is Carroll Gardens West "brokerspeak" for Red Hook?

This came up on the streeteasy.com forum today. I think we all could use a little clarification.

First of all: don't blame the brokers - blame Robert Moses!

Carroll Gardens, Red Hook, and Cobble Hill were once referred to collectively as "South Brooklyn". When the BQE/Gowanus Expy/Brooklyn Battery Tunnel severed Red Hook from the rest of the land mass, the adjoining neighborhoods took on their new identities. But what to call the lil' strip of Columbia Street and its appendages, cut off from its host body? Not Columbia Heights - that's an actual street in Brooklyn Heights. The CG/CH West denominations are helpful if you're looking for school zones - part of the strip is in PS29 (like Cobble Hill), the other is in PS58 (like Carroll Gardens). "Columbia Street Waterfront District" is what the business owners call it, and while it's clunky at least it's accurate. Of course, the waterfront itself is occupied by American Stevedoring, but that's another matter.

For those of us who live in and love this neighborhood, being on the "wrong" side of the BQE is a plus. Better parking (yes, we have cars), better access to recreation/biking, water views, big container ships unloading their freight at night by the twinkling lights of the cranes. Same schools, lower prices. Good unpretentious food - Margaret Palca's rugulach, House of Pizza's deep fried calzones, DubPies' meat pastries, Pit Stop's kid-friendly garden with petanque courts - nice people, and not as hard to get to as people think.

Selling your apartment? How to pick a real estate broker.

I'm always surprised when I see sale listings come on the market with bad photos, no floor plans, no advertising. I think sellers need to be as educated about the market as their buyers are, and should insist on certain services from their listing agents. Here are some of the services you can request from your broker:

-Insist on professional photos and floorplans - they should be part of your listing from day one. 
-Advertising in NYTimes at the very least; ask for a "featured" listing in Streeteasy, Trulia, Property Shark, etc.. 
-If you are going after a high-end buyer, or even just buyers over $1M, the advertising commitment must be long term and inventive; even a well-priced (i.e. 20% off recent comps) apartment over $1M may take a while to sell. Make sure your broker will continue to actively market the place if nothing happens in the first six weeks. 
-Ask what types of buyers they have currently - what are their buyers looking for? Ideally, you'll find a broker who has qualified buyers lined up looking for a place exactly like yours. What have their buyers bought recently? 
-What banks have they dealt with to facilitate loans for properties like yours? See if they can have a bank/mortgage broker draw up a sheet showing loan options for buyers of your actual apartment. It helps buyers and sellers to know that a bank will underwrite the mortgage for your property. 
-Ask for them to provide a stager. They may not want to pay for it, but you can usually get them to (at least) split the cost with you. Staging is KEY. 
-Ask what their co-broke policy is. You want them actively marketing the property to other brokers. Ask them to hold a brokers' open house. See if they'll provide lunch. 
-As always, you'll want a CMA - a comparative market analysis - to support your asking price.

Please know that in this market, your initial asking price needs to be realistic to ensure a timely sale. There is no margin in starting high to see if anyone will bite. They won't. Buyers are looking for value. Find a broker who knows how to maximize your apartment's exposure to the very people who are in the market to purchase it. But don't expect them to find any suckers. They're not out there.

Who you gonna call?

This scene has always struck me as odd. I mean if I was walking by this store for rent on Union Street would I really call the broker over the owner? Why would a broker put their sign over the landlords and not ask the owner to take theirs down? What would compel me to call the broker over the landlord? Does this make the broker look bad? I mean it doesn't make them look good.
Commercial spaces are emptying out left and right in Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill and i just don't see how this kind of advertising is advantages to anyone.