202 Livingston Ave

• MLS# 2218564 – Zillow Page
• Ask $439,000
• 3 bedrooms – 2 baths – Colonial
• Taxes: $7,797 – Village Taxes: $534.00

My overall impression of this house is that I really liked it, although it’s a bit small. It would really be a fabulous house if it had a family room and bigger bedrooms.

It has a nice living room, a nice fireplace, a nice enough dining room and kitchen, although they’re all are kinda small. If you had a real dining table and chairs set up in the dining room you’d have a hard time walking through it.

The kitchen is a galley style, cabinets on both sides, nice tall ones to the ceiling, and lots of them. The kitchen is pretty new, updated in the last five years at least if not sooner. The appliances are very new and modern. The countertops are the Wilsonart solid surface stuff. It’s not granite or quartz, but it’s attractive, and the sink is seamlessly composed of it although it’s white. There’s a little area to the back with more cabinets.

The bedrooms are pleasant enough but small, with OK closet space. Both bathrooms are quite small and neither has tiles except on the floor, both have those plastic tub surrounds.

The basement is low. I probably could stand straight up, but I felt like I was going to hit it so I bowed my head. The yard is smallish but well kept, and there’s a big driveway and detached garage outside the fence.

They just replaced the furnace, put in central AC at the same time, did the windows upstairs with nice ones that bend in for cleaning. Plus there’s a new, 50 year roof. The seller said that they were going to do a 30 year one, but it wasn’t that much more.

It’s a fine house, albeit more suitable for a small family. The agent is the seller and she was very pleasant. I wouldn’t pay $440K for it, not that small and on the busy road. $400K, or $410K, but then I get surprised what people will pay in Babylon. It’s a very liveable house, just not terribly big.

• MLS# 2185361 – Zillow Page
• Ask $419,000
• Previous Sales:
  02/25/2003 – $280,000
• 3 bedrooms – 2 bath
• Taxes: $7,431 – Village Taxes: $761.62

I was really excited about this house, first posted on MLS last week, as it’s in our price range and the photos on MLS looked good. I didn’t want to wait for an open house because I was afraid it might sell quickly, so I arranged to view the house last weekend. And in the end, I liked the house a lot, but the bedrooms were just too small for us. The house listing read to me as a three bedroom two bath, with office. Which sounded perfect to me, other than I’d like a family room or den as well, but in our price range that’s becoming a bit of a pipe dream. However, the third bedroom IS the office. It’s a typical cape floor plan, but people expand houses all the time, so I was hoping there really was a third bedroom plus separate office. In reality, the third bedroom is downstairs, across from the living room, and it’s perfect as an office, as there’s room for two desks and shelving, or one desk and some bookcases. I guess you could wedge a twin-size bed in there but not much else. Certainly not a bed and a desk. The bedrooms upstairs aren’t too small in square footage, but the sloping dormered walls prevent you from getting much furniture in there other than a bed and a chest or so. Our bedroom furniture, which includes a long dresser with mirror and tall chests, wouldn’t fit in there at all. This would be a great house for a single person, a couple with no kids, or a couple with one child, or possibly two who were willing to share a bedroom. However…that’s not us.

So, it’s not for us, but it could be for one of you. I really admired how they did a fabulous job of maximizing space and storage. The kitchen is the best example of that. It’s a small kitchen, there’s no getting around that, but by putting in tall, narrow cabinets, your eye follows them up to the ceiling. The laminate counter is cut back whenever possible to allow more space between the two areas of the kitchen, and everything possible is tucked away, like the microwave, which is in a cubby underneath the counter. In other rooms, there’s storage for wine and other sundries in the dining room under the staircase, and in the downstairs bath they cut out storage cubbies in between the studs on one wall, and there are small cabinets tucked between the ceiling and the top of the bath/shower enclosure. I absolutely adored the covered patio on the southern side of the house, and the yard is quite nice, with mature plantings, although there’s no backyard to speak of as the house is situated at the back and to the side of the corner property.

Whoever renovated this house, whether it was the current owners or previous ones, did a fantastic job. It’s a very livable little house. But in the end it’s just too small for our family.

• MLS# 2104849 – Zillow Page
• Ask $429,900
• 3 bedrooms – 1.5 bath
• $7,069 – Village Taxes: $474.60

This is my very first post on the blog and possibly my last for a while, I’m due to have our little girl any day now. Anyway, this is my report on 39 Totten Place. We both liked the house very much, but walked out saying to each other, “Now we know why that one hasn’t sold.”

Although it’s listed as a three-bedroom house, it really only has two. There’s no access to one of the bedrooms except through the smallest “bedroom,” which is essentially an extra-wide space in the upper hall with a closet and a window. In the photographs, it’s the one with green curtains and rug but no bed. It’s a useful space and would work well as an office or sewing room, or even a place for video games, although maybe not the latter as it’s right outside the master bedroom. It could be a guest room in a pinch, or maybe a nursery, but you’d have to worry about the occupant of the second bedroom waking the baby on his or her way into the other bedroom. This is a house for a couple with one child, or two children who don’t mind sharing a room, as the second bedroom is certainly large enough for two children to share. But for a couple like us, with two children of different genders and widely separated ages, it wouldn’t work, except maybe in the nursery scenario.

If you are one of those couples, this might be a great house for you. It’s a beautiful, 100+ year-old house. There’s plenty of period detail — 9’ ceilings throughout, including on the second floor, a stained glass window over the stairs, lots of original woodwork, and a wrap-around porch. The living room isn’t particularly large, but it’s a reasonable size, especially compared to the tiny living rooms I’ve seen in similar Babylon Colonials. The dining room is huge; the listing describes it as “banquet-sized.” It’s easily large enough for a dining table for ten or twelve and a small seating area with a couch. The kitchen is older—no new cabinets, slick granite countertops, or stainless steel appliances here. But it’s a good size and has light and potential. There’s a small pantry off the kitchen for storage and a recently renovated half-bath by the back door. I didn’t see the basement but my husband reported that it has a lot of storage, although he had to duck his head. The yard isn’t large but is quite pleasant, with a new patio and an electrified and partially finished double garage in the back.

I liked this house very much. It’s right in the village, yet on a quiet residential street. It’s only a few blocks to the train station, a huge boon to a Manhattan commuter like me. But for $430K, we need to have three real bedrooms. That’s the biggest issue for us. This is the second Babylon colonial we’ve seen with this issue—the other house, Lowerre St., had a separate third bedroom, but it was so tiny you’d have to wedge a twin-size bed in there. The current owners were using it as a laundry room, and the washer/dryer nearly took up nearly the entire “long” wall. Lowerre St is another attractive period colonial that seems to be well-priced but has the same dealbreaker: no real third bedroom.