Sell your house fast in Borough Park, Brooklyn.

Borough Park is the largest Hasidic community outside Israel, between Bensonhurst and Kensington, with 13th Avenue as the shopping street and the D train over New Utrecht Avenue. The houses were built between 1905 and 1935 as brick and frame two families on narrow lots, and almost every one of them has been extended since, up a floor, out the back, into the cellar, to hold families with eight or ten children. Demand for houses here is unlike anywhere else in Brooklyn: families need to live within walking distance of their shul and their relatives, so a house on the right block sells to a neighbor before it is listed, and a lot that can hold a bigger house sells to a builder for more than the house on it. Prices have doubled in a decade and are still rising.

The typical home value in Borough Park is around $1,980,000, up roughly 16.2% over the past year, with houses averaging about 39 days on the market.

The extension nobody filed for

Most Borough Park houses have been extended, and a great many of the extensions were built without a permit or with a permit that was never closed. A third floor added in 1988, a rear extension in 2003, a cellar apartment with a separate entrance, a certificate of occupancy that still says two family from 1931. A financed buyer’s lender wants the certificate to match the house, the Department of Buildings file has an open permit and a violation, and the deal waits while an expediter spends six months on it. We buy with the file open, price the legalization into the offer, and handle the expediter and the Department of Buildings after closing.

The lot is worth more than the house

A frame two family on a 40 by 100 lot on the right block is worth more to a builder who will put up a four story, four family with a basement than to anyone who wants the house. That lifts the price, and it also makes the sale strange: the builder’s contract comes with a long due diligence period, a zoning study, and a closing that depends on their financing and their permits. We pay for the lot value, we close in weeks, and there is no contingency for what gets built.

Estates with eight heirs and a rabbinic court

The most common Borough Park estate call is a house a father bought in 1965, extended three times, and left to eight or ten children, some in Borough Park, some in Lakewood, Monsey, Kiryas Joel or Jerusalem. There is a Kings County Surrogate’s Court file and sometimes a beis din ruling on the division, and the house is full of two generations. Agents want it emptied and the extensions legalized first. We buy it as it stands, we work with the estate attorney and whatever the family has agreed, and every heir signs from wherever they live.

The building with a shul, a yeshiva or a store below

Borough Park has hundreds of mixed use buildings where the ground floor is a shtiebel, a classroom, a bakery or a dry goods store and the floors above are apartments, often with a long term lease to an institution at a below market rent. They fit no residential lender and no commercial one at this size, and the institutional tenant complicates everything. We buy mixed use buildings on the income they actually produce, the lease stays as it is, and the building closes in weeks.

Where listing still wins in Borough Park

A house with a current certificate of occupancy that matches what was built, on a block with ten families waiting for it, should be sold to a neighbor or listed, and we will say so. Where a cash sale wins is the house with the open permit and the certificate that does not match, the estate with ten heirs in four places, the mixed use building with the institutional lease, the lot where the builder’s contract did not close, or the owner who needs a closing by a date.

What we buy in Borough Park

Brick and frame two and three families with or without extensions, houses with a cellar apartment or an open Department of Buildings permit, lots and houses a builder wants, mixed use buildings with a shul, a yeshiva, a store or an office below, six family and larger buildings, estates in any condition, houses in foreclosure, and vacant lots. We do not buy cooperative apartments. If you own something unusual, call anyway.

The avenues, the numbered streets, and the Kensington edge

Borough Park is priced by the block and the shul. A house within a short walk of a family’s shul and their relatives is worth more to that family than any comparable sale suggests, which is why so many houses here sell privately before they are listed. The brick rows on the numbered streets between 13th and 18th Avenues are the center of the market. The frame houses toward New Utrecht Avenue and the D train are the oldest and the most extended. The bigger lots up by Ocean Parkway and the Kensington line are where the builders are. We buy on all of them and the offer is built from sales on your block, with the comparable addresses on the sheet.

What every block shares is the extension. Almost every Borough Park house has been added to, up or out or down, and the Department of Buildings file rarely matches the house. A house that has been maintained and legalized sells to anyone. One with three open permits and a certificate from 1931 has a file an expediter needs six months for. We read the same file 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 an extended two family with three generations in it 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. Add an open Department of Buildings permit from a cellar job 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 Borough Park? You can also sell your house fast in Bensonhurst NY or sell a house fast in Dyker Heights NY, and you can read about how we buy houses in Flatbush NY.

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