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i want to puke when i see those..are we talking about these little bungalows with no garage and a lawn the size of what you'd see in queens??
Are these some of the first houses built in those neighborhoods and then got surrounded by big houses The old people living there kept it so it couldn't be torn down?
I couldn't imagine buying a house with less than 1/4 acre..that's what I'm used to.
The first is a 2BR house that I cannot afford ($530k), and I am not sure if I like the "confused" style - as if the owners could not decide between quaint and grand .
House #1 is very unusual:
2BR/3B (9 rooms actually), built 2001, gorgeous yard, huge property (0.8 acres), legal accessory apartment, and with taxes of $1900 (no idea how they managed to do that - must be some kind of a record!!!)
It had to have been an older home which was remodeled within the same footprint with no new additions - structural walls might have been rebuilt, interior walls moved around. I've tried digging around the SC Clerk's website and came up with deed transfers and a lot of mortgages on the property, however the same 5 last names seem to shuffle the property around over the past 10 years. One interesting thing I found was a number of mechanics liens against one of the names which has been on and off and on the deed. One would have to question the integrity of the people who 'built' this house.
No relatively new construction in Stony Brook has taxes under $9K -- let alone under $2K and having a legal rental apartment.
They make a very strong point about 'all permits/CO in place since 2008'. The question is -- what have they done to the place since the CO was issued, and what are the permits for? My guess is that they have added to the structure since 2008 and left a permit open -- which helps keep the taxes down. Once the permit is closed, the taxes will go up.
The property, however, is under contract so someone did find it appealing and didn't balk at the price.
i want to puke when i see those..are we talking about these little bungalows with no garage and a lawn the size of what you'd see in queens??
Are these some of the first houses built in those neighborhoods and then got surrounded by big houses The old people living there kept it so it couldn't be torn down?
I couldn't imagine buying a house with less than 1/4 acre..that's what I'm used to.
Not all 2 BR homes are 'little bungalows'. Older homes were built more modestly as people then didn't have some inflated sense of self which required monumentization in the form of a Mcmansion.
So you would rather see people buy 1/4 acre lots and plop down as large a house as possible? Looking at that from the perspective of scale, it's not much different than the cottage on a small lot.
My house is over 80 years old. It's not large by any means and started it's life as a 2 bedroom summer home. Through modest additions and keeping in mind the proportions of the structure, it is now a very usable 3 BR home which doesn't dominate the neighboring smaller homes. The judicious use of scale has permitted our 3/4 acre lot to still have a large feel about it.
Not everyone has the compulsion to buy new and large. Many of us are rather content to have smaller, unique homes.
It had to have been an older home which was remodeled within the same footprint with no new additions - structural walls might have been rebuilt, interior walls moved around. I've tried digging around the SC Clerk's website and came up with deed transfers and a lot of mortgages on the property, however the same 5 last names seem to shuffle the property around over the past 10 years. One interesting thing I found was a number of mechanics liens against one of the names which has been on and off and on the deed. One would have to question the integrity of the people who 'built' this house.
No relatively new construction in Stony Brook has taxes under $9K -- let alone under $2K and having a legal rental apartment.
They make a very strong point about 'all permits/CO in place since 2008'. The question is -- what have they done to the place since the CO was issued, and what are the permits for? My guess is that they have added to the structure since 2008 and left a permit open -- which helps keep the taxes down. Once the permit is closed, the taxes will go up.
The property, however, is under contract so someone did find it appealing and didn't balk at the price.
It did look like a strange house. Location was attractive to me, but not the rest.
There is a house nearby there - a 4BR/2B cape that dropped to $399k and they really want to sell (the listing agent called me several times asking if I would buy for less . My worry is water accumulation at that spot - at the bottom of the hill. And it's too big for me again.
But is in walking distance for sure, and mostly renovated (with some flukes)...
It did look like a strange house. Location was attractive to me, but not the rest.
There is a house nearby there - a 4BR/2B cape that dropped to $399k and they really want to sell (the listing agent called me several times asking if I would buy for less . My worry is water accumulation at that spot - at the bottom of the hill. And it's too big for me again.
But is in walking distance for sure, and mostly renovated (with some flukes)...
My bigger concern with that house is the location on the curve on SB Rd. It gets crazy busy over there. At least you could cut up Dairy Farm and cut onto the SUNY property (Tabler quad) from Acorn. Also, the land across the street is part of the property SUNY seized from Gyrodyne. We have no idea how much more building is going to go on over there.
I would buy on 25A before buying on that stretch of SB Rd.
2 Bedrooms are fine IF you are in a ranch and have a BASEMENT. Do you know how many rooms you can make in a finished basement ranch house?
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good answer
.
. My worry is water accumulation at that spot - at the bottom of the hill. And it's too big for me again. 
