Sell your house fast in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Sunset Park is the hill between Green-Wood Cemetery and the Bay Ridge line, with the park at the top, the limestone and brownstone rows around it, 5th Avenue as the Latino shopping street, 8th Avenue as Brooklyn’s largest Chinatown, and the old Bush Terminal warehouses along the waterfront that are Industry City now. The rows were built between 1890 and 1915 for the people who worked the docks, and the Norwegians, Finns and Irish who owned them sold to Puerto Rican and then Dominican, Mexican and Chinese families. The houses are three and four story limestones and brick three families, nearly all of them with more households inside than the certificate of occupancy allows, and the N, R and D trains run under 4th Avenue and over the hill.

The typical home value in Sunset Park is around $1,470,000, up roughly 9.5% over the past year, with houses averaging about 66 days on the market.

The three family that is really six households

Sunset Park has more subdivided rowhouses than almost anywhere in Brooklyn. A legal three family with two apartments on each floor, a tenant in the cellar, and a kitchen in what was once a parlor is normal here, and it has been for thirty years. The appraiser counts three units. The lender wants the rest documented or removed. The buyer’s attorney pulls the Department of Buildings file and finds a 2016 vacate order for the cellar. The financed deal ends in week four. We buy the house as its legal units, price the rest as what they are, and the tenants and the city’s file come with the house to us at closing.

The building with the store below on 5th or 8th Avenue

The mixed use buildings along 5th Avenue and 8th Avenue have a store on the ground floor and apartments above, and the store might be a restaurant on a ten year lease, a storefront the owner’s family runs, or an empty space since 2020. They fit no residential lender and no commercial one at this size, so they sit. We buy mixed use buildings on the income they actually produce, lease or no lease, the tenants stay, and the building closes in weeks.

Estates, and the family that bought in 1974

The most common Sunset Park call is a house bought by parents from Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic in the 1970s, or from Guangdong or Fujian in the 1990s, paid off, and held as the family grew into every floor. Now it is a Kings County Surrogate’s Court file with heirs in Florida, Pennsylvania, Queens and back home, tenants on two floors, and fifty years of belongings. Agents want it emptied, the units reduced to what the certificate says and the facade cleaned first. We buy it as it stands, we wait for the letters, and the heirs sign from wherever they live.

Stabilized tenants, Housing Court, and the one who will not leave

Buildings with six or more units are rent stabilized, and a subdivided rowhouse can cross that line without the owner knowing. A tenant paying 2007 rent, a Housing Court case adjourned five times, and a stabilized tenant who simply will not move all end a financed sale. We buy occupied Sunset Park buildings with the cases open, at the rents actually being paid, and the court dates transfer to us at closing.

Where listing still wins in Sunset Park

A renovated limestone on a park block with legal units and market rate tenants should be listed, and we will say so. Buyers from Park Slope and Manhattan line up for a house a lender will finance. Where a cash sale wins is the subdivided house with the vacate order, the mixed use building with the empty store, the estate with heirs in three countries, the stabilized building with the old rent roll, or the owner with a date that cannot move.

What we buy in Sunset Park

Limestone and brick rows, three and four families with extra units, six family and larger stabilized buildings, mixed use buildings on 5th, 7th and 8th Avenues with a store below, frame houses toward the waterfront, houses with a cellar apartment or an open Department of Buildings violation, estates in any condition, houses in foreclosure, and vacant lots. We do not buy cooperative apartments, including the Finnish co-ops. If you own something unusual, call anyway.

The park blocks, the avenues, and the waterfront side

Sunset Park is priced by the hill. The limestone blocks around the park at the top, from 41st to 44th Street between 5th and 7th Avenues, are priced like Park Slope’s southern edge and sell to families who will restore them. The blocks along 5th Avenue and 8th Avenue are priced on the rent and the store. Below 4th Avenue toward the waterfront and Industry City, the frame houses and the small brick rows are priced for the Gowanus Expressway and the trucks. We buy on all three and the offer is built from sales on your blocks, with the comparable addresses on the sheet.

What the three share is age and subdivision. The rows are from the 1890s and 1900s, nearly every one has been cut into more units than it was built for, and a house that has not been renovated has the same list no matter the block: original plaster, a service panel that was never sized for six kitchens, galvanized water lines, a flat roof with layers, and a cellar with a tenant. 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 subdivided rowhouse with six households 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. 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.

Looking just beyond Sunset Park? You can also sell your house fast in Bay Ridge NY or sell a house fast in Park Slope NY, and you can read about how we buy houses in Bensonhurst NY.

Many Sunset Park homeowners also ask us how to sell a house with bad tenants, sell a house with code violations, or sell a house with a tax lien.