Not Looking to Sell Your Bed Stuy Brownstone? Don’t Pick Up the Phone
On Bedford-Stuyvesant’s historic, tree-lined Bainbridge Street, at the corner of Stuyvesant Avenue, Denise Gillman owns the brownstone in which she was born and raised. Gillman says she’s been frustrated lately by the increasing amount of unsolicited phone calls, flyers, and even random drop-ins from real estate companies looking to buy her home. These requests have only become more aggressive since the death of her father.
“Before my father’s death we had received sporadic calls to purchase,” she says in an email. “After my father’s death, the calls have been relentless as well as people showing up and ringing the bell. Previously they called a number long associated with the house, but now they contact my cell and mail/drop off letters.”
Gillman, who is not looking to sell her home, does not think selling to one of these companies would be a good idea. Of the many calls she receives from various realty and investment firms, she says, “the dollar amount is often in the five hundred thousand range.” Yet, she says houses on her block have sold in the $1.8 to $2 million range. As someone who works in the industry, she says that even $1 million is too low for her home.
The median cost of owner-occupied housing units in Bedford Stuyvesant is $1.018 million, according to the American Community Survey’s 5-year estimates from 2013–2017. The median household income in the same area during the same time period is just $51,907. The Washington Post reported that home values in zip code 11216 of Bedford-Stuyvesant — just one block from Gillman’s home — tripled between 2004 and 2016, rising 194%. This discrepancy between income and home values reflects the fact that long-time homeowners, many of whom inherited their homes, have suddenly become property-wealthy.
Gillman names the real estate firm Marcus & Millichap as one of the most annoying offenders. Though the firm did not respond to a request for comment, their website states the firm was “developed as an entire system dedicated to maximizing value for real estate investors.”
Jamie Riché, a real estate agent at Citi Habitats, explains these types of solicitations as standard practice. Though she personally doesn’t cold-call as a method to get listings, she says she knows it works for a lot of agents. Though many homeowners request to be placed on the “do not call” list, Riché thinks a lot of prospective investors don’t care about that list and call anyway.
However, Gillman and her neighbors view these calls as predatory. Kenneth Mbonu, Bed Stuy homeowner and member of the area’s Housing and Land Use Committee, speculates that the prospective investors intentionally seek out elderly homeowners, who may be more easily tricked into selling their homes for under the market rate. Catrin Griffin, who owns a home between Stuyvesant Avenue and Lewis Avenue, said in an email that she’s angered by the countless stories she’s heard “of elderly people being duped into selling for pennies on the dollar of the actual value of their homes, and of others in some tough personal situations being preyed upon.”
Gillman doesn’t think it’s likely the city will be able to curb these predatory phone calls unless it fixes the underlying triggers such as “low supply and high demand of housing stock.”
