All the anti-gentrification fist-pumping in the world is not going to keep your rent from going up. Instead, use the most powerful and actually effective vote you have: your dollar. Several hundred thousand of them loaned to you by a bank, that is.
Agent Eve Levine of Corcoran and mortgage broker Rob Slifer of Professional Advantage present Hipster Mortgage Night, where you can find out what and where you can afford. My suggestion for hipsters just getting started in life is to team up with friends and buy a 2- or 3-family house in South Bushwick. It’s a popular arrangement in San Francisco called Tenancy in Common. This form of ownership could get a lot of young people into their first properties without a lot of up-front capital. Just make sure you have good friends.
Wednesday March 26th, 6-8pm
HUGS 108 North 6th
347-526-1383
FREE, by appointment!
Call or email to schedule a private 20 minute appointment to talk money specifics with Rob and meet with Eve to look at current listings available right now!
Not a Hipster March 19th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
WHAT! Buy a house with friends! OH MY GOD… that is so stupid. Renting with friends usually means by the end you’re no longer friends. Having an idiot go out and buy a case of beer instead of paying the rent is annoying, but having the same idiot go out and buy a case of beer (or crack) and not pay the mortgage is a freakin’ nightmare!
I’m older and wiser now. If I could relive my 20s I’d have rented a small studio rather than a house with idiots. You’d get more privacy and not have to deal with morons!
BornOnWyckoffAve March 19th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Speaking as someone who shared an apartment with several friends when I was 19-20 years old, I totally agree. Renting with them was bad enough… But buying? Forget it!
Jeremy March 19th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Well, I actually meant those approaching 30… I agree it’s silly to buy a house much earlier than that. There’s nothing at all wrong with renting, in fact — it’s for the young.
Jimmy Legs March 19th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
i wanted to do that for a long time but most of my friends who would have been decent tenants-in-common had no money and the ones who had money would have driven me to homicide. i clearly need better friends. do people in san francisco get along better than brooklynites?
Plazma March 19th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
As part of the Hipster Mortgage night I hope they give folks tips on how to not overpay for a place. I’ve seen a couple of places on Wychoff near Dekalb that are just outrageously priced. Realistically, they seemed over priced by 20 to 30 percent.
I don’t think I want to own with friends either in my 20s or 30s. Too transient in my 20s to lay down roots somewhere, too set in my ways by 30s to deal with someone full time I’m not married to.
matt March 20th, 2008 at 9:20 am
I actually just bought a two family in August with 2 friends of mine near the Halsey J stop. They are a couple who occupy the bottom two floors while the top floor apartment is mine. Its basically the worlds smalled co-op. Its worked out well for us so far. I agree, buying with some irresponsible 20 year old friends would be stupid, but if you are in your early 30′s and actually trust the people you are buying with you can structure it in a way that is beneficial to everyone.
pixie March 20th, 2008 at 10:28 am
Buying a house with friends sounds like a horrible idea. It’s bad enough making sure roommates pay their rent and electric bill on time let alone a mortgage, taxes and heating, and the cost of keeping up a building. And does anyone in their 30′s really want to be called a hipster?
Jimmy Legs March 20th, 2008 at 11:00 am
hey matt, where do you live? we live on eldert @ broadway. if your house deal continues to work out, you should start running seminars on how to make that work. if more people could work that out, it could really change the sense that ownership is out of most people’s hands.
MC March 20th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Hi,, I am one of Matt’s cobuyers.. We live on Bushwick between Hancock and Weirfield. Right around the corner from you. I think that Jeremy knew the girls that we bought from actually as our house was posted on here. I know its not for everyone but so far it works for us.
david March 20th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
mortgage night sponsored by a real estate brokerage? HMMMM…
You may or may not think it’s valid to blame inflated real estate prices on brokers but it’s not a stretch to say that a basic reason someone goes into selling real estate is to make as much money as possible.
Sure it would be great to see this as empowering residents of a neighborhood and get them into ownership and calling their own shots. But don’t ignore the factors that have pushed prices sky high.
SFer March 20th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Hello,
This is an ex-New Yorker living in San Francisco and this is how TIC (tenancy in common) is done:
You find someone else (not necessarily friends) who is looking for a similar piece of real estate as you are. You go in on a 2- or 3- or 4- unit building together (you can always rent one unit out to help pay the mortgage). You live in one unit, they live in the others. You don’t actually all live together in a house! And you all sign a bunch of legal stuff promising to pay your mortgage or else your share in the building will be sold to someone else. There are always people looking for TIC opportunities here – a TIC is just as easy to find as a condo in SF. It’s like the poster above says – its just a small co-op.
Jeremy March 20th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
SFer, thank you for explaining TIC, even though I linked directly to what it means in the original post that nobody cared enough to read but did care enough to ignorantly make fun of. You have more patience than I.
David, it’s absolutely not valid to blame brokers for the “inflated” price of real estate, just as it’s not valid to blame wheat traders for the current “inflated” price of wheat. Sellers cannot just set any random ass price and expect anyone to pay it. It seems to me you’re the last person to begin talking to people about the factors that pushed prices “sky-high,” since you seem to think that brokers have some kind of magical power over the price of various commodities. And then you state a truism, that brokers are in the business to make money, as if that was some sort of astute analysis by a seasoned observer. I mean, why do you do your job — for the sheer joy of it?
Amazing.
SteveB March 21st, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Very well said Jeremy!
Dresden March 22nd, 2008 at 1:37 pm
I wouldn’t buy anything with “friends” because, frankly, I don’t believe in the concept. I have allies.
EvergreenGiant March 22nd, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Ha! Spoken like a true German.
Dresden March 23rd, 2008 at 9:55 am
Thanks EvergreenGiant. I do have friends, but come on…. most marriages don’t work! It seems unrealistic, at best, to do this with “friends”. When do you sell? What do you buy someone out for? This sounds like a disaster to any set of close comrades.
Christopher March 23rd, 2008 at 10:44 pm
I have a question. I am a recent college graduate who is moving to Brooklyn in a few months. How can you properly afford rent and still save enough money to eventually put down a good chunk on a condo? I am going to be living with a friend of mine and it just seems to hard to save when you are spending so much on rent…
BornOnWyckoffAve March 24th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Ramen noodles.
BornOnWyckoffAve March 24th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
OK, that answer was a bit flip, but now I’ll try to be helpful.
First of all, do you really need to move to Brooklyn now, or are you doing it just ’cause you want to? If it’s the latter, I suggest staying at Mom ‘n Dad’s another year or two, if possible, working your ass off, building your credit and socking away as much money as possible. (I would have done this myself, ‘cept the unwritten rule in my working-class family is that able-bodied males must leave the nest as soon as they get out of high school). By then, the recession will be in full swing and, with a sizable down payment in hand, and a good credit rating, you’ll be in a much better position to score a deal.
If you DO have to move to New York for whatever reason (e.g., you’ve got a good job lined up) consider living somewhere other than Brooklyn. The borough is really overpriced right now. Consider the Bronx or one of the less trendy neighborhoods in Queens, maybe even Jersey. It may be less convenient/fun than living in hipsterville, but you’ve gotta think long term. You’ll be glad for it later.
Unlike a lot of people on this site, I have no vested interest in your decision, since I’m not in real estate nor do I have anything to gain (directly or indirectly) from more college-educated suburbanites moving to Brooklyn. I left the city years ago.
Best of luck.