Sell your house fast in Kensington, Brooklyn.

Kensington is the neighborhood south of Prospect Park and Green-Wood Cemetery, between Ocean Parkway and McDonald Avenue, with Church Avenue through the middle, the F train on McDonald, and Ditmas Park and Borough Park on either side. It was built between 1900 and 1935, brick rows with a stoop and a cellar on the streets off Church Avenue, frame two families with a porch on the East streets, and six family walkups along Ocean Parkway and Coney Island Avenue. It has been the most mixed neighborhood in Brooklyn for fifty years, Bangladeshi and Pakistani families along Church Avenue and McDonald, Orthodox families toward Ocean Parkway and Borough Park, Mexican families toward the park, and renters from Manhattan who came for the F train and stayed. The buyers are three different markets, and a house two blocks from another can sell to a different kind of buyer for a different reason.

The typical home value in Kensington is around $1,840,000, up roughly 8.7% over the past year, with houses averaging about 56 days on the market.

The brick row bought in 1978 with a cellar nobody filed

The most common Kensington call is a brick row on East 4th or East 8th Street bought in the late 1970s by a family that came from Dhaka or Lahore, held for forty years, and never renovated. A kitchen on each floor, a cellar finished for a brother in law with its own kitchen, a flat roof with layers, a boiler from 1990, galvanized pipes, and three generations in the house. The parents are gone or going back, the children are in Jamaica Estates or in Texas, and the cellar is a problem for every lender. We buy the house as its legal units, price the cellar as a cellar, and the brother in law is handled on terms the family sets.

The frame two family on the East streets with a porch and a tenant

The frame houses between Church Avenue and Ditmas Avenue toward McDonald are from the 1900s, with vinyl over the clapboard, a porch on posts that have rotted, knob and tube on the second floor, and a tenant upstairs who has been there since 2005 at a 2012 rent. A financed buyer’s inspector writes four pages and the lender wants the wiring first. We buy them as they stand, with the tenant in place, and do the work after closing.

Ocean Parkway, the walkups and the stabilized rent roll

The six and eight family walkups along Ocean Parkway and Coney Island Avenue are rent stabilized, with registrations that fell behind, rents set in the 1990s, and a Housing Preservation and Development file. A lender underwrites the loan on the rent roll and the roll will not carry it. We price the building on the rents as they are and the status of each unit, and we buy it with the tenants in place and the file open.

The house near the park that is really a renovation project

The blocks closest to Prospect Park and Green-Wood, off Caton Avenue and Fort Hamilton Parkway, are priced on the proximity to the park, and a tired frame house there is bought by a family from Park Slope or Windsor Terrace who will renovate it. We price those on what the house will be worth renovated, minus the renovation, and we say so, because the seller is usually sitting on a better number than the kitchen suggests.

Where listing still wins in Kensington

A renovated row with legal units, a clean certificate of occupancy and no deadline should be listed, and we will say so, because Kensington buyers bid against each other. Where a cash sale wins is the row with the cellar kitchen the appraiser will flag, the frame house with the four page inspection, the walkup whose rent roll will not carry a loan, the estate with heirs abroad, or the owner going back to Dhaka with a date.

What we buy in Kensington

Brick and frame two to four families, six and eight family walkups, mixed use buildings on Church Avenue, McDonald Avenue and Coney Island Avenue, houses with a cellar unit, houses near Prospect Park, 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.

Church Avenue, the East streets, Ocean Parkway and the park edge

Kensington is three markets with one name. The brick rows and frame houses between Church Avenue and Ditmas Avenue toward McDonald sell to Bangladeshi and Pakistani families on the units and the cellar. The blocks toward Ocean Parkway and Borough Park sell to Orthodox families on the lot and the bedrooms. The streets closest to Prospect Park and Green-Wood, off Caton Avenue and Fort Hamilton Parkway, sell to families from Park Slope and Windsor Terrace on the renovation potential. The walkups along Ocean Parkway and Coney Island Avenue are priced on the stabilized rent roll. We build the offer from sales in your market, with the comparable addresses on the sheet, and we show you which one your house is in before we show you the number.

What the three share is age. The rows are from the 1920s and the frame houses from the 1900s, and a house that was never renovated carries the same list: a flat roof with layers, knob and tube on the second floor, galvanized pipes, a service panel never sized for three kitchens, a cellar with a kitchen and a tenant, and a porch on rotted posts. An appraiser writes the list and a lender wants it done before closing. We put prices next to each item and close anyway.

Signatures from abroad and the embassy package

A Kensington deed often carries a parent who has gone back to Dhaka, Lahore or Mexico City, and a lender’s closing cannot wait on an embassy appointment that takes six weeks. Our title company prepares the package in advance, tabbed page by page, with the embassy or the apostille route chosen for the country, and the owner abroad signs once. The share is wired at closing. A sale that died because a package came back with a missing page is one we have seen, and the second package is the one that closes.

Looking just beyond Kensington? You can also sell your house fast in Borough Park NY or sell a house fast in Flatbush NY, and you can read about how we buy houses in Sunset Park NY.

Many Kensington homeowners also ask us how to sell a house in foreclosure in Kensington NY, sell an inherited home, or sell a house during divorce.