Weird Things Happening in (and outside of) Brookline
The blogosphere got all hot and bothered with two big Brookline stories last week:
- The foreclosure on the elegant Longwood Towers.
- The rebuilding of Brookline — just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, that is.
In case you hadn’t heard, about 200 units at Longwood Towers will be auctioned off as a single block next month. New York-based iStar Financial announced plans to bid on the condos and, with any luck, complete renovations on the towers, where units range from $300,000 to $1.5 million.
Will prices precipitously drop? Will the poor souls who bought-in find themselves out of a whole lot of bucks? And what about the valet parking?
Although I don’t have any answers, I disagree with some of my blogging colleagues (I’m talking to you John Keith!) who wrote off the whole project as a “lemming” –you know, a follower.
Greg Kiely at the Brookline Real Estate Blog mentioned poor location for the Longwood project. Call me crazy, but but I think it’s in a perfect location. It’s a short walk to the Longwood Medical Area and directly across from the Longwood D branch Green Line station. It’s steps away from the Emerald Necklace and within walking distance of Coolidge Corner and the Fenway. Remember, not everyone wants to live on Boylston Street!
Prices for these units don’t seem that far off target; keep in mind, in 2007, the average house in Brookline sold for $1.4 million and the average condo fold for half a mil. Someone will pay to live in a lovely 20′s era building with green space and views. Certainly, other million-dollar condos exist in the neighborhood. So what’s the problem?
John and Greg speculated buyers dislike the awkward floor plans and high condo fees. I can see how fees might hurt sales a bit, but plenty of empty-nesters looking for something near the city without ending up downtown might show some interest. Maybe things would pick up with lower fees and updated floor plans.
We’ll closely watch what happens next, but I wouldn’t write off Longwood Towers, yet. And for those who already bought in the building– chin-up!
The second story, of replicating Brookline in North Carolina, is so laughable it’s hardly worth a mention. Evidently, a developer so loved the look of Brookline, Massachusetts, he thought he’d recreate it outside Charlotte, North Carolina. I’m with the Boston Globe real estate blogger Binyamin Appelbaum on this one. What makes Brookline special is its mix of single-family and multi-family housing built amidst ample greenery, yet still close to the big city. A gated community in the middle of nowhere isn’t Brookline; it’s Disneyland.
Image: freedigitalphoto.net
