Sell your house fast in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Greenpoint is the top of Brooklyn, the neighborhood on the peninsula between Newtown Creek and the East River with Queens across the Pulaski Bridge, the G train on Manhattan Avenue, and McCarren Park on the Williamsburg line. It was built between 1860 and 1910 as frame two and three families for the shipyard and refinery workers, with brick rows around McGolrick Park and walkups along Manhattan Avenue, and it was Polish from the 1950s until the last decade, when the waterfront became towers and the streets off Franklin filled with people from Manhattan. The Polish families who bought on Russell Street or Eckford Street in 1975 for thirty thousand dollars hold houses worth two million now, and those houses are estates, with heirs in Ridgewood, in New Jersey or in Poland, and a building that has not been renovated since the siding went on in 1985. The buyers are developers and renovators, and both come with contingencies.

The typical home value in Greenpoint is around $2,635,000, up roughly 11.9% over the past year, with houses averaging about 65 days on the market.

The frame house on Russell Street bought in 1975 and sided in 1985

The most common Greenpoint call is a frame three family bought by a Polish family in the 1970s, held through everything, and left exactly as it was: vinyl over the clapboard, a kitchen on each floor from three different decades, a cellar with a boiler nursed since 1990, knob and tube behind the plaster, a flat roof with layers, and a tenant on the second floor who has been there since 1998 at a rent that has barely moved. The parents are gone or in a nursing home in Ridgewood. The heirs are in New Jersey, in Chicago and in Krakow. Kings County Surrogate’s Court, an estate attorney on Nassau Avenue, and a letter from a developer every week. We buy it full and occupied, wait for the letters, and heirs abroad sign at the consulate.

Newtown Creek, the oil plume and the Phase I

Greenpoint sits on top of the largest oil spill in the country, the plume under the streets east of McGuinness Boulevard toward Newtown Creek, and the creek itself is a Superfund site. A developer’s contract comes with a Phase I environmental study and the right to walk on the result. A lender on a mixed use building asks the same question. A house above the plume is still a house, and the families who have lived there for fifty years know it. We buy with the plume priced in rather than used as a reason to leave.

The lot the developers keep writing about

A 25 by 100 lot on the streets between Manhattan Avenue and McGuinness, zoned for more than the three story frame house on it, draws a letter a week. The contracts have ninety days of due diligence, environmental testing, a financing contingency and a price that softens. We price the lot the same way, on the zoning and the buildable square feet, and we close without a construction loan.

Tenants since 1998 and a Housing Court case since spring

A good part of the value in a Greenpoint frame house is the units, and a good part of the problem is who is in them. A second floor tenant since 1998 at a 2005 rent, a cousin in the cellar, a top floor tenant who stopped paying after the pandemic and a Brooklyn Housing Court case adjourned since April. We buy occupied, on the rents actually arriving, with the case open and transferring to us.

Where listing still wins in Greenpoint

A renovated brick row near McGolrick Park with legal units and no deadline should be listed, and we will say so, because Greenpoint buyers bid against each other. Where a cash sale wins is the frame estate with heirs in three countries, the house over the plume, the lot the developers keep writing about, the tenant since 1998, the cellar with a cousin, or the owner who needs it settled while a parent is still alive to see it.

What we buy in Greenpoint

Frame and brick two to four families, six family walkups, mixed use buildings on Manhattan Avenue, Nassau Avenue and Greenpoint Avenue, houses on buildable lots, houses above the plume, estates in any condition, buildings in foreclosure, and vacant lots. We do not buy cooperative or condominium apartments. If you own something unusual, call anyway.

West of Manhattan Avenue, east of McGuinness, and the park blocks

Greenpoint is priced by two boulevards. West of Manhattan Avenue toward the river and Franklin Street, the buyers come from Manhattan and a frame house is priced on the lot. Between Manhattan Avenue and McGuinness Boulevard, around McGolrick Park and along Nassau and Driggs, the brick rows and frame houses are priced on the block and the units and sell to families who will renovate. East of McGuinness toward Newtown Creek, the plume is in the price and the buyers are fewer. We build the offer from sales on your side of each boulevard, with the comparable addresses on the sheet, and we show you which band your house is in before we show you the number.

What the bands share is the 1880s frame. A Greenpoint house that was never renovated carries the same list: vinyl over clapboard over whatever was under it, a flat roof with layers, knob and tube behind the plaster, a cellar with a dirt floor, a boiler from 1990, galvanized pipes, and a fire escape the city has written up. A lender’s inspector writes it all down. We read the same list and price it, and the house closes anyway.

The Phase I, the plume and what a title company asks for

A buyer with a lender, and every developer, orders a Phase I environmental study before closing in Greenpoint, and east of McGuinness the study comes back with the Newtown Creek oil spill on it. The lender asks for a Phase II. The developer asks for a discount. The title company asks whether there was ever a tank on the lot. We price the plume on the day we see the house, as a line on the sheet, and we do not come back after a study to ask for more. A house above the spill has been a house for fifty years and we buy it as one.

Looking just beyond Greenpoint? You can also sell your house fast in Williamsburg NY or sell a house fast in Bushwick NY, and you can read about how we buy houses in Astoria NY.

Many Greenpoint homeowners also ask us how to sell a water damaged house, sell a fire damaged house, or sell a house when downsizing.