Cleveland Real Estate News

Old Brooklyn is huge, extending from the Cuyahoga River all the way to the Brooklyn City border.  Within it’s limits sits the Metropark Zoo  (and their new elephant habitat!), a booming new community garden effort, Big Creek Metropark Trails, a soon (we hope) to be connected stretch of the towpath trail, and tons of good food and shopping.  Homes here run the gamut from stately old Victorians to newer ranches and bungalows.  Some of our neighborhoods do not have this spectrum of housing ages…in Old Brooklyn you can find it all.

Housing trends in Old Brooklyn are no longer flat.  The foreclosure issue hit the neighborhood a bit hard, but things are rebounding.  Here is a look at what has happened with single family housing (listed by area brokerages) in 2010.

Currently, there are 231 single family homes listed for sale. That’s not a small inventory, but much better than it had been for a while. The average listing price of these homes is $84,405 or $66 a sq. ft.

My partner Melissa and I have three homes listed in this mix.  One is a deceivingly spacious bungalow  on W. 22nd Street with three times the storage you normally get in an older home of this size.  It backs to the valley, is privately fenced, and was owned for quite some time by our sellers. It’s listed for $69,900.

We also have a wonderful colonial near the City of Brooklyn but still in Cleveland.  It’s on DeLora (in fact, we are just listing it).  Amazing new kitchen with corian counters, porcelain tile, lots of storage, two sun porches on the back and a beautiful front porch. It’s listed for $85,000.

Last but definitely not least, and also close to Brooklyn City, is an arts and crafts beauty on Ardmore. Lovingly restored by the previous owner, the love and detail continued with the current seller.  He even added a funky retro lower level, beautifully, professionally done, with a second full bath.  The second floor has the last two of three bedrooms, including the master with two huge closets.  It’s listed for $119,400.

I mention the details because people bought in Old Brooklyn and stayed there.  Or family members moved into the homes after parents passed.  Whether it’s remodeled or not, so many of these homes were lovingly cared for as opposed to being left for dead.  It’s a community of homes worth considering.

Back to the stats.  In the last month or so, 31 homes went under contract.  The average listing price of these homes was $67,219 or $51 a square foot.  We won’t know sales prices until they close.  That is the average listing price, but there WERE homes above that price that went under contract.  In fact, between the prices of $80k and $120k. 

169 Old Brooklyn single family homes sold since January of 2010.  The average sale price was $62,257 or $48 a square foot.  Included in this mix is a home I sold on Oak Park Avenue (near Lowe park) for $59,000.  It needed a kitchen remodel to get it to the 21st century, but you could have eaten off the basement floor and all mechanical updates were done by the last owner.  Again, that TLC that marks the ‘hood.

Also sold was a colonial on Tate with 1395 square feet of living space, 5brs and 1 1/2 baths. It sold for $70,000.

A colonial on Saratoga sold for $80,000.  It was remodeled thoroughly enough to receive a 10 yr tax abatement (new construction gets 15 yr abatement in Cleveland, but if you  basically take a house down to the studs, do plbg, mechanicals, roofs, etc, you can get a 10 yr abatement, which usually freezes the tax rate at it’s current amount for a ten yr period).

19 homes sold in Old Brooklyn between the prices of $100k and $120k. 15 were in South Hills, but four were east of Pearl.  These four include a tudor on Northcliff that was the highest sale price of 120k.

More links:

For the skinny on Old Brooklyn from someone who loves it so, read Gloria Ferris.

James Rhodes High School

Peace Out – 3C