Sell your house fast in Ridgewood, Queens.

Ridgewood is the brick neighborhood on the Brooklyn line, built almost all at once between 1905 and 1925 by a handful of developers using yellow Kreischer brick, and it still looks that way. Block after block of two, three and six family rows with the same cornices and the same stoops, enough of them intact that large parts of the neighborhood are landmark districts. The M train runs down Myrtle Avenue to Fresh Pond Road and Forest Avenue, the L stops at Myrtle Wyckoff, and Bushwick is across the street, which is why the renters who were priced out of Brooklyn have been arriving for a decade. The German families who owned these buildings for three generations are selling them now, and the question for most of them is what to do with the tenants.

The typical single family home value in Ridgewood is around $910,000, up roughly 2.2% over the past year, with houses averaging about 51 days on the market.

The six family with rent stabilized tenants

Ridgewood’s six family tenements are rent stabilized, and the rents in most of them were set decades ago. A building with six units, four of them paying 2005 rents, a boiler from 1990, a roof that is due, and a Housing Preservation and Development file with a few open violations is a hard sale to a financed buyer, because the lender underwrites on the rent roll and the rent roll does not cover the mortgage. We buy stabilized buildings on the income they actually produce, the tenants stay with their leases, and the violations and the boiler become ours after closing.

The three family on a landmark block

In the Stockholm Street, Ridgewood North and Ridgewood South historic districts, the Landmarks Preservation Commission has a say in the windows, the cornice, the stoop and the front door. A previous owner’s vinyl windows or a replaced cornice can mean a violation and a required restoration before a financed buyer’s lender will close. We buy landmark rows with the violation open, we take on the Landmarks file, and we handle the restoration after closing rather than asking you to do it first.

Estates, and three generations in one building

The most common Ridgewood call is a building a grandfather bought in 1950 and a parent inherited in 1985. The family lives in one unit, cousins in another, and tenants who have been there thirty years in the rest. Now it is an estate in Queens Surrogate’s Court with heirs on Long Island and in New Jersey who do not want to be landlords. Agents want the family units emptied, the tenant files organized and the facade cleaned before photos. We buy it as it stands, family belongings included, we wait for the letters, and the heirs sign from wherever they are.

The tenant who stopped paying, and the one who will not leave

A nonpaying tenant in a stabilized unit is a Housing Court case that takes a year, and a stabilized tenant who simply will not move cannot be made to. Both end a financed sale, because the buyer’s lender wants the units delivered as described. We buy occupied Ridgewood buildings with the cases open, at the rents actually being paid, and the court dates transfer to us at closing.

Where listing still wins in Ridgewood

A renovated three family with market rate tenants on a clean block should be listed, and we will say so. Ridgewood has buyers from Brooklyn lined up for a building a lender will finance. Where a cash sale wins is the stabilized six family with the 2005 rent roll, the landmark row with the Landmarks violation, the estate full of belongings, the tenant in Housing Court, or the owner with a date that cannot move.

What we buy in Ridgewood

Two, three and four family brick rows, six family and eight family stabilized buildings, mixed use buildings on Myrtle, Fresh Pond and Seneca with a store below and apartments above, landmark district houses with open violations, estates in any condition, houses with a cellar apartment, and vacant lots. We do not buy cooperative apartments. If you own something unusual, call anyway.

The yellow brick, and what a century does to it

Almost every Ridgewood row was built with Kreischer brick from Staten Island, and a hundred years later the brick is usually fine and everything behind it is not. The cornices are pressed metal and rust from the inside, the lintels are brownstone that spalls, the roofs are flat tar with layers on them, the cellars have the original coal bin and often the original boiler flue, and the plumbing is a century of patches. A building that has been maintained sells to anyone. A building where the last real work was in the 1980s has a list a lender’s inspector fills three pages with, and a buyer who needs a mortgage asks for a credit the family does not want to give. We buy on the list as it stands and do the work ourselves afterward.

The other thing a century does is paperwork. A six family built in 1912 may have a certificate of occupancy from 1938 or none at all, a Housing Preservation and Development registration that lapsed when the father died, and a Department of Buildings file with a permit from a 1970s boiler job that was never closed out. A title company wants all of it cleared before a lender will fund. We buy with the file open, and clearing it becomes our job after the deed records.

Water bills, violations, and the liens the city attaches

New York City attaches water and sewer charges to the building, not the owner, and a six family where tenants have run the water for decades on a frontage meter can carry a Department of Environmental Protection balance in the tens of thousands with a lien sale behind it. Environmental Control Board fines for a sidewalk, a dumpster or a missing boiler inspection attach the same way. We buy with all of it open. The balances come out of the purchase price at closing, itemized on the offer before you sign, and the open permits and violations become ours to close.

Looking just beyond Ridgewood? You can also sell your house fast in Glendale NY or sell a house fast in Maspeth NY, and you can read about how we buy houses in Middle Village NY.

Many Ridgewood homeowners also ask us how to sell a house when downsizing, sell a house fast when relocating, or sell a house in probate.