Brooklyn loft

September 14, 2008 10:47 AM

Where can I find raw space lofts (residential) in Brooklyn, New York? And what kind of price range would we be talking about?

Where can I find raw space lofts (residential) in Brooklyn, New York? Most places offered on craiglist are renovated already. How and where can I find unrenovated/raw lofts that I could remodel myself?

And what kind of price range would we be talking about?

(Yoyo_nyc, asking for a friend)

posted by yoyo_nyc to Home & Garden (6 answers total)

You're talking rental? The problem with this scenario is that if the place is not renovated, it may not have a Certificate of Occupancy. If the landlord rents out a non-CFO, space with the understanding that you will live there, and you renovate it, then the landlord is at a big disadvantage according to NY law. Great for the tenant, but few landlords will risk this anymore.
posted by StickyCarpet at 11:22 AM on September 14, 2008

Response by poster: I guess my friend is thinking of buying.
posted by yoyo_nyc at 11:46 AM on September 14, 2008

Yeah, I remember reading an article in the paper when I was living in Brooklyn about the kind of situation StickyCarpet is talking about - landlords would rent out raw lofts in buildings that were not meant for occupancy. Of course, the tenants eventually realized they had hit the legal loophole jackpot - they could stop paying rent completely and there was nothing the landlord could do about it, they couldn't be evicted for any reason without the landlord getting into even more legal trouble than they already were. Once the cat was out of the bag these kinds of living situations disappeared.
posted by bradbane at 11:49 AM on September 14, 2008

You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a reno'd loft space building in Brooklyn. DUMBO and Williamsburg in particular are full of these sorts of buildings. As for raw loft spaces, you might try looking at Bushwick and Greenpoint, or perhaps even Williamsburg (which is probably, at this point, less promising) and see what you can find. There are many real estate firms - Corcoran, Brown Harris Stevens, Aguayo and Huebener, BrooklynProperties, to name but a few - that have websites with listings you can search by your specifications. The NY Times website also has a pretty extensive real estate search, as does Streeteasy.com.

Be warned - lots of the buildings in DUMBO are owned by the same jerk who charges through the nose and delivers a crappy product. I know of two couples who each had problem after problem with their loft spaces in these buildings, and one of whom ultimately ended up as part of a class action lawsuit against the owner before cutting their losses and selling their apartment.
posted by TryTheTilapia at 12:54 PM on September 14, 2008

Red Hook has several old warehouse spots that are in the process of being turned into residential space, you could probably get in on something before it's been renovated. I'd say a real estate agent would be the place to go to find out about these.
posted by pupdog at 11:15 PM on September 14, 2008

Raw loft space your friend's best bet is probably east Williamsburg. As far as buying goes, they just have to hit up real estate agents - there are a million of them. Try aptsandlofts.com also.

For the most part, there is no-to-not-much raw loft space left in Brooklyn, and what there is is probably nothing like the raw-loft-space fantasies you might be entertaining.

The going rate is the same as for any apartment, sometimes higher - these are lofts after all.

(For the record, I found my old space by driving around and writing down the numbers on the sides of buildings advertising 'raw loft space'. Years later, my landlord (the greatest landlord in Brooklyn, incidentally) and I were talking one day and he was complaining about how he was getting five-to-ten calls a week asking if he had any empty loft space. This was about fifteen years ago. - Which is to say, good luck.)
posted by From Bklyn at 12:23 AM on September 15, 2008