I mentioned in my Brooklyn walkabout post that many of the houses in Victorian Flatbush were in a shabby state of disrepair, and the photo of this mansion on Albemarle Road (the most prestigious road in Prospect Park South) demonstrates my point. It looks like some of the wood is warped and rotting and a lot of the paint is peeling off.
It probably costs a lot of money to make a house like that look new again.
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And this rent-control horror story from the NY Post demonstrates why you shouldn’t rent out a Victorian mansion in New York City:
For a mere $1,040 a month, Bernard Haggerty, 39, lives in the rent-controlled Flatbush mansion with five bedrooms, a den, a living room, a kitchen, a dining room and a bathroom. The home's owners would like to move in -- but are stuck instead in an apartment next door.
The Wallach family has owned this palatial home for 61 years. Back in 1941, the monthly rent was $75. In the late 1960s, landlord Lee Wallach wanted to evict tenant George Haggerty, his wife and his three sons and move in himself. But his request for owner occupancy was denied, and the Wallachs wound up living next door instead.
Haggerty's grown sons moved out, and when he and his wife passed away, his son John Haggerty gained succession rights by claiming that he had been living in the house all along. In order to inherit the right, a tenant had to have been residing in the rental for the previous two years.
The landlord believed that John Haggerty, the second-generation tenant, still lived in the enormous Brooklyn home -- but The Post learned that he too passed away.
"I'm third-generation," Bernard Haggerty said, as he walked up to the double wooden doors of his huge place.
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"The Engineer" provided me with a link to a very in-depth article about this very mansion, 1305 Albemarle Road (what a wonderfully WASPy name for a road in Brooklyn), documenting it's poor state of repair.
This link is very much worth clicking on, there are a lot of photos of this mansion, and if you scroll down to the bottom of the page there's a comment by a relative of one of the former owners who said that the owners she knew sold the house in the 1970s after several burglaries (because remember, this mansion was in the middle of what was a ghetto neighborhood in the 1970s, but which has improved somewhat since then because of gentrification of the areas around Prospect Park).
Do the Wallachs at least make any money on that deal?
Why don't they burn the place down, or kill Bernard, or both?
Posted by: Anonymous | July 16, 2012 at 11:44 PM
With inflation, that 75 rent in 1941 is now 1,098.
So the rent control law let the owners raise rent with inflation. That is supposed to be some great injustice? Are the owners of the building in anyway responsible for the fact market rents rose faster than inflation? Of course not, they just want to free ride on the demand for housing created by others.
Speculating on developed property creates no value and I applaud NYC for discouraging it. The wealthy in the end will always get what they want in the end, but nice to see them temporarily frustrated, in particular the inherited wealthy.
Also, could the NYT have found a more atypical example of a rent control property and its owner? They are mostly slumlords owning large buildings full of small apartments.
Posted by: Sjdj | July 17, 2012 at 01:50 AM
Normally, rising rents would encourage people to build more apartments. But if rents are suppressed then there is no incentive to build. It might keep rents low but it also results in a housing shortage. Even worse, landlords can't afford to maintain properties with low rents so they fall into disrepair. This is just another example of how people who ~care~ make things worse. Everyone would be better off letting supply & demand set price instead.
Posted by: destructure | July 17, 2012 at 03:03 AM
Stealing people's property rights sounds as if it ought to be unConstitutional: but presumably it isn't?
Posted by: dearieme | July 17, 2012 at 03:57 AM
"So the rent control law let the owners raise rent with inflation. That is supposed to be some great injustice? "
I would say "yes." See, I am pretty confident that when the property was originally rented, neither party intended or expected that the tenant and his descendants would have the right to occupy the property forever and exclude the owner forever.
Normally, it is the owner of a property who (along with his heirs) has the right to occupy the property and exclude others. When people own property, their reasonable expectation is that if they rent the property out for some period of time, they can wait until that time period expires and then re-occupy the property.
So in effect, the legislature has transferred a big chunk of the ownership rights in private property from the owner to another individual. The legislature has defeated the owners' reasonable expectations. So yes, I would say it's an injustice.
Posted by: sabril | July 17, 2012 at 07:21 AM
In rent controlled San Francisco, some people hold on to lease for a looong time and do some shady things to keep their rentals super low. I went to view a room for rent in a 3 bedroom apt in SF and the people subletting the room weren't even on the lease. The person on the lease went on a year long vacation elsewhere but kept her name on the lease so the other two subletters could enjoy low rents. I wouldn't be surprised if some really long time renters are profiting from subletting rooms.
Rent control isn't justice. All it does is create scarcity due to people holding onto their rentals longer, which causes landlords to rent out their units for a lot higher than they otherwise would in order to subsidize other renters living locked in super cheap rentals.
Posted by: Drole Prole | July 17, 2012 at 07:44 AM
Only government stealing of property rights is unconstitutional. Private stealing is ok.
Posted by: outlaw josey wales | July 17, 2012 at 08:40 AM
Sjdj,
Should we send checks to all the people who bought homes in Detroit that are now worthless? They didn't keep up with inflation.
Posted by: asdf | July 17, 2012 at 09:07 AM
More photos of this particular house:
http://www.scoutingny.com/?p=4481
You have to wonder how much it would cost to restore a house like this. It has a/c, so recent owners have put SOME work into the house.
I don't see anything on the web about any restorations in the area. It probably doesn't make financial sense, unlike other areas of Brooklyn, where restorations are well documented (we even got a "This Old House" in Park Slope!).
Posted by: The Engineer | July 17, 2012 at 09:36 AM
Just like Stockholm. Those who lease get rent control and sublease for more money (usually.) The secondary market is really advanced. The actual residents have fewer rights than the fake residents and pay market price instead of government enforced discounted price. The owners don't profit so they don't build new properties and no one wants to become owners because this is common knowledge. The only people who benefit are the people on the government protected lease who often don't even live there.
If the rest of the country didn't subsidize finance so much, you guys would die from the burdens of you own liberalism.
Posted by: Secret of NAM | July 17, 2012 at 02:53 PM
Bernard Haggerty? I expected to see an Irish guy or maybe even a black. Must be like George Zimmerman's family lineage.
Posted by: Vic | July 17, 2012 at 09:45 PM
Speaking of Brooklyn, there were more hijinks at McCarran pool:
http://gothamist.com/2012/07/17/police_use_pepper_spray_to_stop_mcc.php
Posted by: Peter | July 17, 2012 at 10:07 PM
dearieme, the Constitution is dead. It has been replaced with Penumbras and Emanations. Supreme Court opinions are now on par with the scholarship of a community college creative writing course.
Posted by: Baines | July 18, 2012 at 09:56 PM