SHEEPSHEAD BAY'S ONLY INDEPENDENT NEWS BLOG

Source: Google Maps

Muss Development is close to finally completing the Oceana Condominium and Club, a string of luxury buildings between Brighton Beach Avenue and the Riegelmann Boardwalk. The completion of the final tower comes more than 25 years after the real estate firm announced their ambitious plan to build hundreds of condos on the site of the Brighton Beach Bath and Racquet Club, according to a report in Real Estate Weekly.

Construction of Oceana’s final structure, located at 50 Oceana Drive West, is set to be finished by 2014. According to the Wall Street Journal, the total cost of the building’s construction is $40 million. Demand for the new space is high as 50 of the 59 units have already been sold. If you’d like to grab one of the last spots, you’ll have to shell out some serious cash, as unit prices range from $700,000 to $1.7 million.

Source: Brownstoner. Click to enlarge

Tennis anyone?

The popular racquet sport, along with yoga, swimming and dancing, are returning to the intersection of Shell Road and Avenue Z in Gravesend in what is set to be Brooklyn’s largest sports complex.

Sheepshead Bites first learned about the deal from the broker, Brian Hanson of Massey Knakel Realty Services, and now a report by Brownstoner provides a few new details.

Costing $20 million, the 140,000 square-foot complex, dubbed MatchPoint NYC, will feature a whopping nine indoor tennis courts, an Olympic-sized swimming pool and a restaurant. It replaces the Brooklyn Racquet Club, which closed in 2011 and was later demolished.

Set to open in six months, the facility – developed by Dmitry Druzhinsky and tennis coach Noumroud Moukhatasov, and spearheaded by entrepreneur Sergey Rybak – will provide an outlet to accommodate for the huge Russian love of tennis.

125 Brighton 11th Street (Source: Google Maps)

Well, here is some stunning news in the world of Brooklyn real estate. A nine-building portfolio, located along our own Southern Brooklyn beachfronts, has hit the market for a whopping $124 million, according to a report by Commercial Observer.

The buildings, spaced out over a three-mile stretch covering the Sheepshead Bay, Brighton Beach and Gravesend communities, consist of 652 rent-stabilized units and encompass 580,000 square feet.

The most expensive of the building in the group is the Manhattan Beach Estates, a beachfront property located at the end of Riegelmann Boardwalk. The massive 206,432 square foot, 228-unit strong complex is listed at $49 million. The sweet cherry about this place is that it has an additional 43,000 square feet of development space, unlike the other units which are already built to capacity, but still pricey:

The buildings at 79 Brighton 11th Street and 125 Brighton 11th Street, near the inlet between the Gravesend and Jamaica bays, are located two blocks from the beach, with a combined 171 units, a $32 million price tag, and just over 168,000 square feet; while the property at nearby 2835-2875 Ocean Avenue has 200 rental units, roughly 160,000 square feet and a price of $35 million.

Further north, towards the Mapleton and Midwood neighborhoods, sits 357 Avenue P, with 53 units across 42,000 square feet, for $8.1 million.

The real estate people pushing this mega-purchase are also touting the properties’ well maintained condition and close proximity to the B, F and Q lines, the Belt Parkway and Ocean Parkway. Seems like a dream come true, so who wants to chip in with me to buy this bad-boy? I got $5 to put down.

Source: NY Curbed

Ever dream of being surrounded in wood paneling, chandeliers, elegance and grandeur, all while staying in Brighton Beach for some reason? Well, lucky for you, your dreams are on sale and if you put down $2,999,000 bucks, it could all be yours today!

Curbed let us in on this 2805 Ocean Parkway penthouse that has seen its asking price slashed repeatedly in the past few months. All this suffocating luxury was originally going for about $4.5 million when it was first listed in July, first dropping $1.2 million, than $400,000 in recent weeks.

According to Curbed, the owners are desperate to sell, so who knows how low they’ll go on this 5 BR 5.5 BA sparkly penthouse of high living? There is only one way to find, so contact the sellers and make your best offer!

Source: NY Curbed

Source: NY Curbed

Source: Daniel Schwen via Wikimedia Commons

For many of us, Hurricane Sandy was a wake up call. The storm smashed our businesses, flooded our homes and disrupted our lives, showing how fragile we all are so close to the sea. While scientists, engineers and residents all grapple with questions concerning the future of the city and how to best protect it, politicians and real estate developers are going full speed ahead in developing expensive real estate projects in vulnerable flood zones.

A story in the IBO web blog details the plans, the costs and the risks facing these projects in the face of a changing environment brought on by the reality of climate change.

While acknowledging that City Hall, led by Mayor Bloomberg, have put the science of climate change and its impact on the city front and center, in the form of the 2011 report Vision 2020: New York City Comprehensive Waterfront Plan, the city has given the go ahead to multi-million dollar projects right in the middle of Zone A evacuation areas.

Such projects include a $500 million dollar complex on the North Shore of Staten Island, which will feature the world’s largest Ferris wheel. Locally, the city approved an even bigger investment for Coney Island. City Hall rezoned the area to allow for more housing, hotels and a brand new amusement park. The city also wants to pump $400 million into the area to upgrade the sewers, acquire new land and improve the lighting and boardwalk.

While IBO notes that the city is making an effort to meet the guidelines and codes laid out by the Federal Emergency Agency, they might not be be enough in the face mega-storms that may become the norm in the coming future. Citing Yale University’s Environment 360 website:

“The storm easily overwhelmed many of the relatively minor adaptations that New York had already put in place.”

For example, Brooklyn Bridge Park, where another large development project is planned, was created with what are called “soft edges.” These are supposed to help reduce the force of waves and accommodate rising tidal levels. While these edges may work in many instances, they were no match for Sandy, which swamped the park and sent water lapping at the structure housing the newly installed carousel.

America is known for racing as fast as the forces of commerce will take her, especially in the world of real estate, but such speed may need to be tempered in this new world where Mother Nature’s power trumps progress. The question remains as to how many lessons we will have to learn before we fully heed the limits the natural world lays before us.

In a revelation that should surprise no one, ultra rich Manhattan property owners are paying practically bupkus in property taxes compared to the average city property owner.

A report by the New York Times discovered that those who have bought the most fabulous of Manhattan properties, including a pad at 15 Central Park West sold to a Russian billionaire for $88 million dollars, pay a comparatively meager property tax rate.

The average Manhattan property owner pays an average of .78 percent of their property’s value in taxes each year, a good deal less compared to the national average of 1.14 percent. So, for a property worth $88 million, you would expect the owner to return $686,000 dollars a year in taxes. However, because of decades-old rules and regulations put in place that never considered the exploding value of Manhattan property, that Russian billionaire we mentioned only has to pay a comparably scant $59,000 a year in property taxes.

The New York Times explains how such an injustice is allowed,

These comparatively meager official values are the result of a state law dating from decades ago that requires the city to calculate the value of condominiums and co-ops by using rental buildings as comparable properties, instead of apartment sales. At the top of the market, populated by $20 million, $30 million, $40 million, even $88 million apartments, real estate experts say that truly comparable rental buildings essentially do not exist. “The highest-value ones are going to tend to be the hardest to line up,” said George Sweeting, deputy director of the city’s Independent Budget Office. Their resulting effective tax rates, he continued, “will be extremely low, even by the standards of the city.”

So… we gettin’ screwed or what?

[via MBCG]

Source: Wall Street Journal/ Bryan Derballa

Gary and Abbe Lasker’s Manhattan Beach home is up for sale. The asking price of $1,695,000 does not include the couple’s extensive collection of antiques.

They’ve been working on their detached home since 1978, and have spent about $30,000 on home renovations throughout the years. They did most of the remodeling work themselves and occasionally hired a friend.

Unfortunately, their asking for a helping hand didn’t work out so well. They asked for an extension of their brick fireplace and instead got a  ”leaning tower of Pisa,” according to Abbe.

“I just got a sledgehammer and I knocked the whole thing down,” said Gary. “And that’s the fireplace story.”

Wall Street Journal featured their beautiful home as part of their “House of the Day series,” and that’s the house of the day story.

Click the link to see some interior and exterior shots of the beautiful home.

Source: Google Maps

The gas station at 2472 Knapp Street and Avenue Y is on the market for $2,900,000. The 1,512 square foot property, which currently houses a Shell gas station, is located across the street from the recently closed Burger King.

The station is still open, but at least one readers says that they often and inexplicably run out of gas. It’s also one of the few gas stations and mechanics left in the area, as several have shuttered in the last decade.

And with the edge of the shit factory wastewater treatment plant there, along with a shuttered Burger King and an abundance of Sanitation trucks – is Avenue Y and Knapp Street officially a blighted intersection?

Source: Google Maps

One of Southern Brooklyn’s nicer little commercial developments, the building at 1214 Avenue M sold for $6.55 million late last month, city records show.

The six-story building features 31,520 square feet. The first floor is all retail while the remaining floors are for 12 office units – as much as they might look like rather nice apartments.

The building was developed from an existing building in 2003.

Source: Ian Muttoo/Flickr

Telling Tips is a series of articles from local experts to help you save money, make better decisions and plan for a better future.

In New York, there is what seems an almost endless debate between buying and renting a home; between owning a piece of property that you can say is yours, versus paying someone for the privilege of living in theirs.

There are pros and cons to both approaches, but if you’re going to go along with the theory that buying is the best way to spend your money, then you better know what’s in the Contract of Sale. And if you’re going to want to know what’s in the Contract of Sale, you better have a clear understanding with your attorney.

Far too often I find clients are simply ready to sign on the dotted line. If they’re buying a Dyson on Home Shopping, they’re certainly checking out the warranty to see what it covers. But if they’re putting down hundreds of thousands of dollars, many of them simply trust that the lawyer has done what the lawyer should do, and they sign away.

This, my friends, is a terrible mistake. A client should always know (and in my opinion has the responsibility to know) what it is that they’re agreeing to.

“But a lawyer should tell the client what they need to know when they buy real estate,” you say. Granted. Yes. But I find that sometimes clients will feel too intimidated to ask, and it’s to their detriment.

Here are some of the common questions you should ask your attorney if you’re buying some real estate in New York:

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