Sell your house fast in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.

Sheepshead Bay is the neighborhood at the bottom of Brooklyn where the fishing boats tie up along Emmons Avenue, between Gravesend to the west and Marine Park to the east, with Manhattan Beach across the footbridge and Gerritsen Beach on its own peninsula. The houses north of the bay are 1920s and 1930s brick semi attached two families with a driveway and a garage, built for the families who rode the B and Q trains to Manhattan. Along the water and in Gerritsen Beach they are smaller frame houses, many of them summer bungalows that were winterized in the 1940s. Russian and Ukrainian families have owned a great deal of it since the 1990s, the older Italian and Irish families are estates now, and Superstorm Sandy put four feet of water through everything south of Avenue X in October 2012.

The typical home value in Sheepshead Bay is around $995,000, up roughly 4.7% over the past year, with houses averaging about 91 days on the market.

The Sandy house that was dried out and never raised

After the storm, some houses south of Avenue X were raised with city or state money and some were not. The ones that were not had the cellar pumped out, the boiler replaced, the sheetrock cut at four feet and patched, and life went on. Fourteen years later, the flood maps have been redrawn, the insurance pricing has changed, and a lender requires a policy that a buyer calls insane. Some houses carry a Build It Back grant with conditions on the deed. Some have an open permit from a 2013 repair that was never closed. A financed sale dies at the insurance quote or the title search. We buy Sandy houses raised or not, with the premium and the paperwork priced into the offer, and the insurance becomes ours.

The semi attached with a 1958 kitchen and a parent’s name on the deed

North of Avenue U the calls are estates. A brick semi attached bought in 1955 or 1962, paid off in 1980, kept exactly as it was: the original kitchen, a cellar finished in the 1970s, a boiler nursed along for thirty years, and sixty years of belongings. The children are on Staten Island, on Long Island or in Florida, there is a Kings County Surrogate’s Court file, and the house is full. Agents want it emptied and painted before photos. We buy it as it sits, belongings included, we wait for the letters, and the heirs sign from wherever they live.

Gerritsen Beach, and the bungalow that is a house now

Gerritsen Beach is its own place: narrow courts, frame bungalows from the 1920s that were winterized and added onto for a century, a volunteer fire department, and no sewers until recently on some courts. The houses are small, close together, and almost all of them flooded in Sandy. A lender’s appraiser struggles to find comparables and the inspector finds a century of additions without permits. We buy Gerritsen Beach houses on their own terms, with the additions, the flood history and the court priced in, and close in weeks.

The cellar apartment and the tenant who stopped paying

Thousands of Sheepshead Bay cellars have a kitchen, a bathroom and a tenant, and after Sandy a good many of them are also a flood history. A cellar is almost never a legal apartment in New York City. The appraiser notes it, the lender wants it removed, and the deal ends. Add a tenant who stopped paying and a Housing Court case that takes most of a year. We buy the house as its legal units, with the tenant and the case, and both become ours at closing.

Where listing still wins in Sheepshead Bay

A raised, renovated house near the water with a current elevation certificate, or an updated semi attached north of Avenue U with legal units and no deadline, should be listed, and we will say so. Where a cash sale wins is the Sandy house that was never raised, the estate full of belongings, the Gerritsen Beach bungalow with a century of additions, the cellar apartment, the tenant in Housing Court, or the owner with a date that cannot move.

What we buy in Sheepshead Bay

Brick semi attached and attached two families, detached houses along the bay and in Manhattan Beach, frame bungalows and houses in Gerritsen Beach, Sandy flooded houses raised or not, houses with a cellar apartment or a Build It Back condition on the deed, mixed use buildings on Sheepshead Bay Road and Avenue U, estates in any condition, houses in foreclosure, and vacant lots. We do not buy cooperative apartments. If you own something unusual, call anyway.

North of Avenue X, south of it, and the peninsulas

Sheepshead Bay is priced by the flood line. North of Avenue X, the semi attached rows near Kings Highway and Avenue U are priced like any 1920s Brooklyn neighborhood and sell to families who want a driveway and the Q train. South of Avenue X to the water, every house carries the storm in its price: raised or not, the insurance, the elevation certificate, the grant conditions. Manhattan Beach across the footbridge is the top of the market and still in the flood zone. Gerritsen Beach is its own world of courts and bungalows. We buy on all of them and the offer is built from sales on your side of the line, with the comparable addresses on the sheet.

What every section shares is that nothing here was built after 1960 and a great deal of it was patched after 2012 rather than rebuilt. A house that has not been renovated has the same list no matter the block: a service panel that was replaced after the flood and nothing else, galvanized water lines, a roof with layers, a cellar with a water line on the wall, and a boiler on a platform. A lender’s inspector writes it all down. We read the same list and price it, and the house closes anyway.

Water bills, violations, and the liens the city attaches

New York City attaches water and sewer charges to the house, not the owner, and a two family where a cellar tenant has run the water for years can carry a Department of Environmental Protection balance in the thousands with a lien sale behind it. Environmental Control Board fines attach the same way. Add an open Department of Buildings permit from a 2013 Sandy repair that was never closed out, and a title company has a page of items to clear before any lender will fund. 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 after the deed records.

Looking just beyond Sheepshead Bay? You can also sell your house fast in Bensonhurst NY or sell a house fast in Flatbush NY, and you can read about how we buy houses in Canarsie NY.

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