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Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park infographics: what's built/what's coming/what's missing, who's responsible, + project FAQ/timeline (pinned post)

Next to B15 site, 497 Dean apartment building (mostly rent-regulated, flipped twice) on sale for $3.4M

TerraCRG listing; click to enlarge
DNAinfo had the scoop yesterday, Apartment Building Next to Atlantic Yards Hits the Market for $3.4M:
A modest four-story apartment building in Prospect Heights hit the market this week for $3.4M, advertised as a great investment in a neighborhood where “in just a few years, rents have risen from $25/SF to $50/SF,” according to a release by the property’s brokerage firm TerraCRG, which added that the prices “are poised to reach $55/SF and above within the next two years.”
While DNAinfo's Rachel Holliday Smith rightly warned that the 497 Dean Street property is next to a construction site for B15, a 27-story tower that will include a school, she missed a couple of key issues, notably that this rent-regulated building has been sold two times, with escalating prices.

Looking at the numbers

From the TerraCRG listing
Three of the eight apartments are free market with average rent for the building at $27 per square foot, providing significant upside with market rents in the area achieving above $50 per square foot.
In other words, five apartments are not free market. So the buyer will have a significant upside only when/if current rent-regulated residents are encouraged/pushed to leave.

And if the new owner pays the ask of $425,000 per unit, that owner surely has to get those rent-regulated residents out--and renovate--to make a profit.

And the new owner has to bet on that. There's history here. StreetEasy shows that the entire building sold for $970,000 in 2011 and then $1,660,000 in 2013.

The adjacent building, at 499 Dean, sold for $500,000 in 2004, and the new owner paid/nudged residents out, then rebranded it as a condo building, where a one-bedroom (4A) sold for $405,600 in 2011 and then sold for $685,000 this past April.

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