Sell your house fast in Gravesend, Brooklyn.

Gravesend is the big square of southern Brooklyn between Bensonhurst and Sheepshead Bay, with Kings Highway and Avenue P on the north, Coney Island Creek and the Belt Parkway on the south, Ocean Parkway on one side and the F train on McDonald Avenue down the middle. It was an English town in 1645, and the old village square still sits at Gravesend Neck Road and McDonald Avenue with the cemetery in the middle of it. The rest was built between 1905 and 1940, frame two families with porches on the West streets, brick semi attached rows toward Avenue U, and big detached houses near Ocean Parkway. It was Italian for a century, the blocks near Ocean Parkway and Avenue U have been the center of the Syrian Jewish community since the 1950s, and Chinese and Russian families are buying everywhere else. Three different markets, three different buyers, and the offer depends on which blocks you are on.

The typical home value in Gravesend is around $1,060,000, up roughly 4.7% over the past year, with houses averaging about 93 days on the market.

The frame two family on a West street with a porch and three kitchens

The West streets between McDonald Avenue and Stillwell Avenue are frame houses from the 1910s and 1920s, two families built with a porch, a stoop and a cellar. A century later most of them have vinyl over the clapboard, a finished cellar with its own kitchen, a service panel from the 1960s, galvanized pipes, and a flat roof with three layers on it. A financed buyer’s inspector writes four pages. The lender notices the third kitchen. We buy them as they stand, price the list in the offer, and do the work after closing.

The house near Ocean Parkway that is really a lot

Between Ocean Parkway and East 7th Street, from Avenue P down to Avenue X, the buyers are families who want to be near the synagogues and the schools, and the houses are being bought for the land. A 1925 frame house on a 40 by 100 lot sells to someone who will take it down and build a brick house twice its size. The condition of what is standing barely matters. The offer is on the lot, the zoning and the width, and the house is a number for demolition. We know those blocks and we price them that way.

The estate the family will not agree on

A semi attached house off Avenue U bought in 1961, a mother who died in it last winter, three children with three opinions and a brother who has lived in it rent free since the divorce. Kings County Surrogate’s Court, an estate attorney, and a house nobody will clean out because nobody agrees who should. We buy it full, we buy it with the brother in it on terms the family works out, we wait for the letters, and the number on the sheet is the same number every heir sees.

Coney Island Creek, Avenue X and the flood line

The blocks south of Avenue X toward the creek and the Belt Parkway are in the flood zone, and a few of them took water in 2012. A house there carries a premium the next lender will require and an elevation certificate nobody ordered. We buy with the quote in the number and carry the policy after closing.

Where listing still wins in Gravesend

A renovated two family with legal units on the West streets, or any lot near Ocean Parkway with no deadline, should be listed, and we will say so, because the developers will bid against each other. Where a cash sale wins is the frame house with the four page inspection, the estate the family cannot agree on, the cellar kitchen the appraiser will flag, the tenant in Housing Court, the house south of Avenue X with the flood premium, or an owner who needs a date.

What we buy in Gravesend

Frame and brick two and three families, semi attached and detached houses, houses on buildable lots near Ocean Parkway, houses in the flood zone south of Avenue X, mixed use buildings on Avenue U, Kings Highway and 86th Street, estates in any condition, houses in foreclosure, and vacant lots. We do not buy cooperative apartments. If you own something unusual, call anyway.

West of McDonald, east of McDonald, and the Ocean Parkway blocks

Gravesend is three markets with one name. West of McDonald Avenue, the frame two families on the West streets and the brick rows toward Stillwell sell to families from Bensonhurst and Sunset Park, priced on the driveway and the legal units. East of McDonald toward Ocean Parkway, the buyers are families from the Syrian community and the price is the lot, not the house. The old village grid around Gravesend Neck Road and Village Road is its own pocket, with odd shaped lots that follow the 1645 survey and houses that sit sideways to the street. We build the offer from sales on your side of McDonald, with the comparable addresses on the sheet, and we show you which market your house is in before we show you the number.

What the three share is that nothing was built after 1940 and most of it was never renovated. A house that has not been touched carries the same list: a flat roof with layers, knob and tube behind the plaster, galvanized pipes, a service panel never sized for three kitchens, a cellar with a water line, and in the frame houses a tank in the yard. A lender’s inspector produces the list and the deal stalls on it. Ours produces the same list with a price beside each line.

Lot width, zoning and the number a builder sees

On the East streets near Ocean Parkway, the number that matters is the lot: 40 feet or 50, R5 or R6, corner or mid block, and how many square feet the zoning allows. A builder’s offer is the land value minus demolition minus the builder’s margin, and the builder’s contract has ninety days to confirm every one of those numbers. We run the same math on the day we see the house, write it on the sheet, and close without a construction loan.

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

Many Gravesend homeowners also ask us how to sell a fire damaged house, sell a house when downsizing, or sell a house fast when relocating.