Last week I told Kristina from Bridge Realty that we were interested in 185 India but was told that someone was interested in actually buying it. Can’t knock that! It’s been on the market since 2007. The realtor, Kristina, is the nicest – she called back to tell me that she was going to check out a place that was potentially better than 185 India. I stressed that the home office was important and that, even though 185 India was strictly a 2 BR we were going to convert the walk-in closet into Shane’s office. She said she’d report back to me on whether or not this place was better.
She called me the next morning saying that this place was much better than 185 India. It was a 2 BR/2 BA duplex with a private roof deck at 182 Huron for $3,000. So off we went.
The building was the Belvedere IV on 182 Huron. The apartment is on the 4th floor and there’s no elevator in the building.
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You walk into the foyer which has one closet on the right, the living room in front of you, the 1st bedroom doorway (seen here: the view through the massive windows of the bedroom), a closet where you can put a washer/dryer and one of the bathrooms. |
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The bathroom on the 1st floor. Sorry for the fuzzy iPhone pic! Finishes are in a dark cherry wood. The bathtub has a step thing happening and a jacuzzi. |
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The his & hers sinks in the bathroom |
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The main room. The counter is part of the kitchen. |
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The kitchen with all appliances. |
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View from the living room. |
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View from the bottom of the stairs. |
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Chandelier and mezzanine. |
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Mezzanine upstairs where there’s a closet, then 2nd bathroom and the 2nd bedroom. |
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Another view of the main room. There’s a terrace overlooking the back there. |
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2nd bedroom. No closets. For some reason there was a sofa and an armoire there. Okay… |
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2nd bathroom with just the shower. This bathroom I liked better than the one downstairs. Had cooler tiling and not so much cherry wood. |
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This is the area we considered making Shane’s office. |
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Stairs leading up to the roof deck, a 2nd exit and the closet. |
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This view is of the whole mezzanine. You can see the stairs (barely) that lead up to the private roof deck. |
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View from the roof deck. This was really really nice. However, there is a door that leads to the building which is there for fire escape purposes. So technically anyone can come and go. |
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The hot tub. On the roof. Not a big fan but interesting idea. |
So, overall…
PROS: We liked the fact that we could make an office area, the private roof deck and the location on Huron. Rent would go towards buying the unit, if we were interested (around $550k). Sunny.
CONS: Not working for us: the living room was smallish, the asking rental price of $3k for a 2 BR/2BA with no amenities and the private roof deck that isn’t so private. Also 4th floor walk-ups become tiresome after a while.
We’re a big fan of Kristina. She’s one of the nicest realtors we’ve met recently. She also gave us a very helpful tidbit: the owner would be willing to negotiate the price because it’s the only vacancy in the building. Shane mentioned that he thought it’d be the opposite but apparently when your building is almost completely occupied you want the last unit off your hands. Which makes sense: 185 India has 4 empty units and the owner is now no longer willing to rent it out.
What we found out later, via Google, is that originally this unit wasn’t meant to have the stairs leading upstairs in the living room. Probably the other side of the building has it set up differently as you can tell from the original floor plans.
Greenpoint Apartment Hunting: 185 India
[googlemap lat="40.733055" lng="-73.954112" width="300px" height="150px" zoom="15" type="G_NORMAL_MAP"]Brooklyn, NY 11222[/googlemap]
