"Don't part with your dreams - when they are gone you may still exist but you will have ceased to live" - Mark Twain

"Do you know that this blog wouldn't exist if it wasn't for you being here to read it!?" - Bobby Gill

Friday 15 January 2010

New York - 'Thinnest house' sells for £1.3million

If you thought houses and rents were expensive in the UK, take a look at this 2-bed house built in an alleyway that just sold for $2.1 million (£1.3 million)

Listed in August 2009 for $2.7m, the Real estate broker said that "despite the awkward dimensions, the property will fetch its listed price due to its uniqueness, history and location in one of the city's most famous preserved neighborhoods."

Well there can't be too much confidence in the US / New York Market if it took 4 months to sell and at 22% below the value they expected! It's still good money for an approx. 1071 sq ft property. That's nearly $2000 per square foot (£1200 sq.ft.) they got from the $2500 sq.ft. it was valued at!

Then again, with a rental of $10,000 per month, the new owner is not exactly looking for cashflow either! So that's at least one person with cash who is confident that the real estate / property prices will go up giving them capital growth.

Bobby




"A home less than ten feet wide, which has been dubbed New York City's skinniest house, has sold for $2.1 million (£1.3million).

Number 75½ Bedford Street: one of New York's narrowest, and most photographed, houses

The red, 9.5 foot wide, 42 foot long brick building in Manhattan's fashionable Greenwich Village neighbourhood was built in 1873. Located at number 75½ Bedford Street, it was built on land which previously had been an alleyway between numbers 75 and 77.

The interior, unsurprisingly as the house isn't a TARDIS, is even smaller, measuring just 8.5 feet wide.

The two bedroom, two bathroom home, which went on the market priced at $2.7 million in August last year, was last sold in 2000 for $1.6 million.

At the time it was listed last August, real estate agent Alex Nicholas admitted: 'Due to the narrowness of the house, I think you have to be very clever in how you decorate.'

The narrow home has had some famous residents in the past - a plaque on it notes that poet Edna St. Vincent Millay once lived there; so did anthropologist Margaret Mead.

However, it looks like the new owners might not be living there themselves - the newly-sold building was listed on real estate websites on Wednesday as a rental available for $10,000 a month." - Source: Tom Phillips - www.metro.co.uk