I held this one back a bit because I thought it might be a possibility for us, but in the end it’s really just too small to be practical for our family.

48 Litchfield Ave

• MLS# 2230603 – Zillow Page
• Ask $369,000
• 3 bedrooms – 1.5 bath
• Previous Sales: 04/13/2005 – $377,000
• Taxes: $6,335 – Village Taxes: $600.24

This is a charming little colonial, with a big emphasis on little. The owner was there and gave us the nickel tour, pointing out the work he’d done to the place over the last four years. He’s an electrician and when he mentioned that he had wired the entire place with CAT6 network cable, the computer geek in me was ready to buy the place on the spot.

Upstairs are three pretty small bedrooms and the the recently updated full bath. Downstairs is a small living room, a modest dining room and kitchen as well as the half bath. The kitchen has not been updated and while it’s not ancient, it certainly wants an upgrade.

The house sits on a somewhat busy corner. Like most corner lots, you lose a measure of useful yard, although the enire property is fenced in, which helps mitigate that some. The detached garage and driveway are actually located at the back of the yard and turned 90 degrees to face Cameron Ave. This setup allows a good deal more usable yard, but could be problematic for lugging groceries and such to and from the house.

The basement is small and cramped. Usable really only for the laundry area and storage.

I’m rushing to get this post in before midnight to make it a full week of daily posting. Woo hoo!

629 Morrison St

• MLS# 2225526 – Zillow Page
• Ask $359,000
• 3 bedrooms – 1.5 bath
• Taxes: $9,337 – Village Taxes: None

This house is up on the northwest edge of the 11702 zip code. It’s in the Babylon School District, but outside of the Village proper. Hence no Village taxes. The backyard butts up against the Belmont lake park/North Babylon Cemetery. It’s about a hundred yards from Sunrise Highway. When you’re out in the backyard, you can’t see the highway, but you can hear the traffic.

According to the Realtor, this house belongs to an older man who is now in an assisted living facilty. He’s not coming back and the house must be sold. The basement and garage are full to the brim with junk. I’m thinking that this man was living alone for a long time.

This is the typical split built in this section of Babylon, exactly the same layout as the 81 Pilcher house that we looked at last year. But, where that house was reasonably updated, this one looks like it’s been stuck in a time warp. Take the living room. It looks like something out of a 60′s magazine layout.

Look at those lamps and that sunburst clock. Neato!

While nothing major in the house is in serious disrepair (as far as I can tell), a lot of the house is OEM equipment. The kitchen looks like it’s original from when the house was built. The bathrooms aren’t original, but they’re 20 or 30 years old at best.

There’s a good opportunity for someone looking for a fixer-upper. A reasonably handy person could probably do most of the work themself.

179 Cadman Ave

• MLS# 2232398 – Zillow Page
• Ask $449,000
• 5 bedrooms – 2 bath
• Taxes: $9,211 – Village Taxes: $1,019.00

I actually saw this house months back when it was first listed. The owner pulled the listing shortly after and it’s just back on the market now. When I first saw the house, it was in its original 70′s glory. There was Harvest Gold and Avacado Green in the kitchen and some scary flocked wallpaper in the living room.

The house is a fairly typical high ranch. Three bedrooms, living room, dining room and bathroom upstairs. A bedroom, a bonus room/laundry room and large family room downstairs. Like a lot of these high ranches, it’s been converted to an illegal two family, so there’s a row of kitchen cabinets and a stove set against the near wall of the family room.

The house has been cleaned up quite a bit. They’ve done a fair bit of work to it, but it’s a big stretch to call it renovated. Both sets of kitchen cabinets have been repainted/refaced. There’s new appliances and a new laminate countertop in the upstairs kitchen. The walls have been painted and the wood floors upstairs refinished. Both bathrooms are still pretty much disasters though. The owner was very proud of the complex tile work in the upstairs bathroom, but that doesn’t make it any less hideous.

37 Ellen Ave

• MLS# 2230599 – Zillow Page
• Ask $429,000
• 3 bedrooms – 1.5 bath
• Taxes: $7,602 – Village Taxes: $632.75

Another unpolished gem in Babylon Village. Actually, not so much an unpolished gem as a total gut job. Given the state that the house is in, I’m assuming that this is another estate sale.

Beyond the fact of this house’s age and state of disrepair, there are issues with the layout and the modifications made to accommodate more modern requirements. For example, there was originally very little closet space in the bedrooms, so additional closets were built. In one case a closet was built in a corner around a window because they couldn’t figure where else to put it.

The big plus for this house is obviously the plot of land that it sits on. At 100×110 it’s just over a quarter acre, a big lot with a lot of potential.

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.

I did a little experiment with these three. I took my Flip video camera along and left it running while I was in the house. It wasn’t quite as useful as I was hoping.

I thought I might upload the videos to Youtube so you could get an idea of how the houses look and my initial impressions, but when I downloaded them to my computer I saw that they weren’t really suitable to show anyone. The effect is kind of like HGTV’s “House Hunters” meets Cloverfield. Debra said that looking at them made her nauseous. Oh well.

2 Greenway S

• MLS# 2212145 – Zillow Page
• Ask $389,900
• Prior Sales: None
• 3 bedrooms – 1.5 bath
• $10,399 – Village Taxes: $859.14

This is a big, rambling, custom cape on a quarter-acre, corner lot. The house is actually “U” shaped, with the open part of the U being the patio area. The house has been well-kept and maintained, but it hasn’t been updated since leg warmers were a hot fashion item.

It rare that a Realtor catches the best selling point of a house in one photo, but I have to give props to Georgia Wescott, because here it is

Look at the huge living and dining rooms and those beautiful hardwood floors.

The rest of the house is not quite as nice, but it does have some upside. The kitchen is big and bright, but it’s old old old. The scary, yellow, laminate countertops are actually worn down to white in some places. The cabinets are old, but they’re solid wood and could be repainted or refaced. The kitchen has two doors to the outside, one that goes to the front of the house and one to to the patio area in the back.

The bedrooms are of good size, especially for a ranch, and there’s ample space even in the second and third bedrooms. There are some neat built-ins too, if you like that sort of thing.

The basement is huge. It’s a true, full basement and follows the outline of the house. There was no musty smell and while it wasn’t finished, the walls were painted and it was clean and dry.

This is a great house, albeit one that’s going to need a lot of updating.

12 Robert St

• MLS# 2186271 – Zillow Page
• Ask $445,000
• Prior Sales: None
• 3 bedrooms – 2 baths
• Taxes ???? – Village Taxes: ????

I’ve been watching this new construction go up over the last couple months and I jumped at the chance to have a look inside.

The house is actually smaller than it looks. The huge, two car garage gives an impression of size, but there’s not that much inside space. The downstairs is mostly one area. The kitchen, living room and dining room are combined in one modest space. Everything was still in the process of being built, but I wasn’t all that impressed. The kitchen counters were cheap, faux-granite laminate and the cabinets were not of the highest quality.

The bathrooms were nice enough, although with builder’s grade materials. The downstairs bath has a shower stall as well as the laundry area, there’s no basement. The upstairs has a shower stall and a bath, which is nice. Although the builder missed the boat a bit by not installing a double-sink vanity.

One of the selling points of this house is the unfinished space over the garage. I was curious about it, so I had a look. I had to climb up a rickety ladder to see it though. There’s currently no access to it from the main house. There’s a linen closet where the door to this area would be and you’ll need to take that out if you finish the space.

It’s a good-sized space, but when they say unfinished, they mean completely unfinished. There’s not even any plywood down on the floor. And while the square footage is generous, the angles of the roof intrude on the room, so there’s less usuable space than you might think from looking at the floor plan.

345 Litchfield Ave

• MLS# 2216226 – Zillow Page
• Ask $359,990
• Prior Sales:

  3/15/2002 – $188,860

• 3 bedrooms – 1 bath
• Taxes: $5,580 – Village Taxes: $442.32

This is a cute, little ranch, emphasis on little. The whole house has been nicely renovated from one end to the other. In fact, it almost looks like the after picture on one of those renovation shows Debra loves to watch on HGTV.

Unfortunately, it’s incredibly small. I think it has less space than my current apartment. There’s not even enough space for a real laundry area, the clothes washing chores are handled by a tiny, apartment-sized top and bottom washer/dryer unit.

There’s no garage, no basement and only a modest shed out the back for storage. The yard is nice and big, though. You could possibly add on the back of the house or at least build a detached garage, were you so inclined.

This is a great house for a single person or childless couple. I can’t see much potential here for a family home.

My realtor tells me this one is “gone”, but I still see it listed on MLS.

84 Village Line Rd

• MLS# 2209043 – Zillow Page
• Ask $459,000
• 3(2) bedrooms – 1.5 baths – Cape
• Taxes: $8,770 – Village Taxes: $682.67

This is a neat, old 20′s house with some interesting quirks, if your into that sort of thing. As you walk into the place, the stairs are right in front of you with the living room to the left and the dining room to the right. Both of these room are of decent size. The living room is an especially nice space, or it would be once the tchotchkes and pictures were cleared out. The hardwood floors have potential, but they’re all beat up and need to be refinished. In the back of the house is a den which looks like it’s a converted sun room. It’s all done in dark paneling, but freshened up it could be a very pleasant place to spend some time.

The kitchen is very tiny, pretty much a galley kitchen. It’s not old old, but it probably wants a redo sometime soon. Off to the side of the kitchen is the laundry area. Space has been made for an office and it’s nice but I think you might blow out the wall there and make the kitchen bigger as that would probably be a better use of the space. There’s also a bonus room here, really 3/4 or so of a converted garage. I worry about these garage conversions. The village wants to ensure that you have a garage to park your car so I wonder if it’s on the CO or if it was done “on the sly”.

Upstairs are the bedrooms and they’re laid out in the typical cape style, one on either side of the stairs. The one on the left is of usable size and there are some interesting built-ins that take advantage of the various attic-like nooks and crannies. On the right are bedrooms two and three. In fact, you have to walk through bedroom two to get to bedroom three, making it of little utility unless you have kids who don’t mind sharing the space. Both rooms are fairly small, as you might imagine.

The Realtor suggested that the two bedroom side could be used as the master suite, with the extra room being used as a dressing room. It’s an interesting idea, but it makes the house a true two bedroom proposition, which isn’t really appealing to me.

In the middle of the upstairs is the full bath which sports what I’m pretty sure is the original tub from the when the house was built. The bathroom is old, but not really charming old. It’s just tired old and it needs some work.

The backyard is very nice and the basement is a bit musty but it has enough height for me to walk around comfortably and maybe even enough for a treadmill, an unusual thing for a house from this period. As mentioned previously, the garage has been mostly converted to a room, so there’s no space there for a car.

The house is certainly livable as is, but anyone spending money in this range is going to want a new kitchen and a new bathroom at minimum. Bottom line, this is a lot of money for a tiny house this far north in the Village, especially one that needs as much work as this one does.

You can see that we’ve really caught the real estate bug when were going to see houses way out of our price range.

142 Livingston Ave

• MLS# 2205934 – Zillow Page
• Ask $569,000
• 3 bedrooms – 2 baths – Tudor
• Taxes: $12,729 – Village Taxes: $1,159.00

It’s a nice house on a nice big lot. The house is actually quite a lot bigger than it looks from the front.

The place could use some freshening, there was some ugly wallpaper and some other things that needed updated.

The kitchen is nice. It has a rather unusual mosaic floor with a border that I liked, and marble countertops with a fancy edge. Unfortunately there’s not a lot of counter space/work space, but it’s a lovely bright kitchen with a lot of windows and room for a kitchen table.

The living room has nice hardwood floors, also with a border, and a fireplace, but with a replacement mantel. For some reason the dining room had ceramic tile floors–what a bad choice, and it undoubtedly ruined the original wood floors. There’s a nice den/family room as well, also with hardwood floors.

The bedrooms are of moderate size for a house in this price range. All three have sloped ceilings to some extent. The third bedroom is particularly small.

The downstairs bath was really great. It had a really long, really deep tub was set into a marble surround. There was an attractive tile mosaic right above.

A large chunk of the backyard is taken up by the pool area. The pool is nice and big, but it’s decked instead of surrouned by concrete and the decking is a bit of disrepair. The garage has been turned into a shed/poolhouse and there’s no way to get a car in there now.

We both like this house a lot, but it has a good number of knocks for a house in this price range. It only has three bedrooms and they’re not very big. It’s on a moderately busy road near an active corner. While the place isn’t falling apart, it does need a good amount of work. The taxes are pretty high and on top of that there’s no usable garage.

Still, it’s a beautiful house and I could easily see someone finding it and falling in love.

395 Park Ave

• MLS# 2196769 – Zillow Page
• Ask $370,000
• 3 bedrooms – 1.5 baths – Colonial
• Taxes: $5,982 – Village Taxes: $696.60

We got there a little early, so we did a quick tour aound the outside. This house needs work. The detached garage looks like it’s dangerously decrepit. There’s a big hole in the front and through it you can see a block of wood propping up the window. The yard is a good size, but it needs work and there’s not a lot of privacy. The house itself needs new siding, among other things.

Shortly after we arrived. Tom the Realtor showed up and ushered us inside. The inside of the house seemed smaller than I thought it would be. The living room and dining rooms were smallish, although the kitchen was of a decent size for the house.

The house is obviously an estate sale of some sort. There’s some small renovations and repairs that have been done. For example the nice, hardwood floors have been completely refinished and it really gives the house some pop. On the other hand, the old, wooden, kitchen cabinets have been painted, but that doesn’t really do much to disguise the fact that the kitchen is old, worn out and seriously needs updating.

Upstairs there are three bedrooms and the full bath. The master bedroom was small, but perhaps of acceptable size, depending on your requirements. The other two bedrooms were really cramped and probably wouldn’t work for us.

Probably the biggest negative on this house is the location, near the end of Park Ave. It’s a busy part of the street, not far from the light on Route 109, and pulling out into traffic was a little too exciting for me to contemplate doing it every morning.

31 Greenway S.

• MLS# 2163798 – Zillow Page
• Ask $399,000
• 3 bedrooms – 2.5 baths
• Taxes: $8,725 – Village Taxes: $888.18

This is another one of those “I liked it and Debra…not so much” houses. A quaint little cape on a corner lot in the Fred Shores area of Babylon, 31 Greenway is an odd house with some interesting features and a few drawbacks.

The layout is a little different than your usual cape. There are two bedrooms downstairs, while the upstairs is one large master bedroom. The space around the stairway is set up as a nice, sitting area, with chairs, book cases and a small writing desk. It was a little warm up there and I wonder how hot it gets on a really sunny, Summer day.

The dining and living rooms are nice enough, but the real issue is the kitchen. Again, we find the same crappy cabinets that our apartment has, but this time they’re accompanied by ugly, purple laminate counters and stuffed into a cramped, little galley kitchen. The kitchen really needs more than renovation, it requires a completed reconstruction and there really isn’t any space for it unless you blow out a wall or take over some of the dining room.

The garage has been turned into a studio apartment, again with the same crappy kitchen cabinets. The Realtor said that it’s legal, but I’m somewhat dubious. It’s actually a nice big space that would be quite usable as a family room/office/etc. except for the fact that the only way to get there from the main part of the house without going outside is to traverse a narrow, claustrophobic corridor that runs between the bathroom and one of the downstairs bedrooms. My shoulders are actually too wide to allow me to walk down this hallway straight. I had to turn my body sideways.

I liked the basement. It’s not finished, but it’s big open and dry and there’s a lot of potential there. The backyard is quite small and it’s almost all cement and gravel. Not much room there for running and playing.

The place does need some work, including a new roof, but it’s a unique and charming house. With some money and some creativity, it could really be something special.

I’ve got another old open house — 31 Greenway — to write up and we’re going to see some houses this weekend, so I hope to have more content for you soon.

78 Livingston Ave

• MLS# 2138891 – Zillow Page
• Ask $389,900
• 4 bedrooms – 2 bath
• Taxes $9,756 – Village Taxes: $1,005.00

This house has been on the market for over a half year now, price reduced from $410K to $389,900. As of this writing, it’s down to $379,990 and still no takers. There seems to be open house after open house to no effect. A Realtor of my acquaintance referred to this property as “a dog”. Is it really so bad?

The house is your standard high ranch. Upstairs there are three modestly-sized bedrooms, a living room/dining room area, a bathroom and the kitchen. The kitchen is smallish and it has the same craptastic, builders-grade, 80′s-era cabinets that I have in my apartment. But it’s certainly a usable space and it’s not in terrible shape. The upstairs bathroom has some ugly-looking tile work, but it’s still pretty usable.

Downstairs we have another bedroom, a utility room and a good-sized family room. The downstairs bathroom is similarly ugly and the shower stall (no tub) is tucked weirdly behind the door.

78 Livingston was, as a lot of high ranches are, converted into an illegal two-family house. The owner rented out the top and bottom as separate apartments. Almost all the evidence of that has been wiped away. The extra kitchen is gone. The garage, which used to be a room, has been turned back into a garage. The whole house has been cleaned and painted and new, dull gray, builders-grade carpeting has been laid down.

I saw a lot of potential in this house, but Debra thought differently. After going back and forth on the topic, she said that she just didn’t like the house, which was good enough for me. But I’d encourage everyone to give this house another look if you saw it before they cleaned it up. It’s not a great house, but it’s not terrible for the money and it’s been on the market for a long time, so the owner could be open to some lowballing.

78 Wampum Rd

• MLS# 2184880 – Zillow Page
• Ask $499,000
• 3 bedrooms – 1 bath
• Taxes: $11,684 – Village Taxes: $1,059.41

78 Wampum is a bit like a time capsule. Walk through the door and you’re transported back to the era of I Love Lucy because the house hasn’t been updated since Eisenhower was president. The kitchen still has the same steel-edged, electric green laminate countertops that were installed when the house was first built and the same 50′s era wood cabinets that my grandmother had in her apartment in Canarsie when I was growing up.

Apart from the 50′s charm, this house is basically a smallish, three bedroom ranch. The master bedroom isn’t a bad size for a house like this, but it’s still small. The other two bedrooms don’t have a lot of space either. The living room is a decent size and the dining room has a charming built-in that I liked very much.

It does sit on a nice piece of property, one third of an acre is very rare in the village for a house in this price range. However, it’s a corner lot, so you’re getting a lot of side and front yard and not so much back yard. To me, that looks like a lot more lawn to mow without that much more usable space.

When I say that this house hasn’t been updated since the 50′s, that’s not entirely true. The whole basement has been finished, with a kitchen, full bath and two bedrooms. Unfortunately, my understanding is that this wasn’t done with the proper approvals and permits, so it makes it a bit problematical for someone coming in and buying the place. It seems to me that there are more than a few of these illegal conversions on the market now and I’m wondering if the town is starting to crack down some.

155 Cooper Street

• MLS# 2183404 – Zillow Page
• Ask $349,000
• 4 bedrooms – 2 bath
• Taxes: $6,300 – Village Taxes: ?

Sometimes, I think, you really want to try to see what a house was or what it could be, rather than what it currently is. 155 Cooper Street is a classic home from the halcyon days of turn of the century Babylon. What it could be is a restored beauty within easy walking distance to the train and nestled in the heart of the village. What it is, unfortunately, is a decrepit, ramshackle house that has been sadly neglected for decades and currently serves as a flop house.

I think that this is the first house that I’ve seen that is actually unlivable. This is despite the fact that at least a half-dozen people are, in fact, living there. The Realtor notes in the listing that the house needs some TLC. What it needs is a complete, top-to-bottom renovation including new kitchen, baths, windows, siding and a completely new electrical system. The electric in the house looks like it hasn’t been upgraded since the house was first electrified, probably some time in the 30′s. It sports “classic” push-button light switches from that period and wiring run on the outside of the walls.

On the other hand, the house does appear to be structurally sound, apart from some troubling floor sags. It’s of decent size for the period. The four bedrooms are modest, but you could probably knock out a wall and make one decent master. There’s a huge walk-up attic that could be dormered out and turned into a big master suite as well. I do see a lot of potential here.

Unfortunately, the house sits on a pretty small spit of property wedged in between the train tracks on one side and the fire department substation on the other. Even worse, there’s no garage and no real place to put one unless you drained the scary-looking, pond-shaped pool in the back.

In better times builders would probably be lined up around the block to buy this house and turn it into a show piece. These days, I expect the house will sit for a while until someone with more money than sense happens along.

19 Nehring Ave

• MLS# 2184651 – Zillow Page
• Ask $319,000
• 3 bedrooms – 1 bath
• Taxes: $5,480 – Village Taxes: $636.00

This ranch-style home is on a corner lot in the Twin Oaks section of Babylon Village. The Twin Oaks section of Babylon is on the west side of Route 109 and consequently in the West Babylon school district. For this review, I thought about going into the thesaurus and pulling out as many synonyms for small as I could — tiny, minuscule, petite, cramped, etc. — just to keep things fresh. Instead of doing that, lets just take the small modifier as read and if there’s any part of this house that isn’t, I’ll be sure to let you know.

First of all, this house is listed as a three bedroom, but it’s really just a two bedroom. The wall to third bedroom has been removed and that area is now a dining room. It’s not a bad idea really, because otherwise there’s really no place in the house to eat. You couldn’t really fit a table in the living room and leave space for much else and there’s certainly no room in the kitchen.

The kitchen is nice and bright. It’s been reasonably updated, albeit not expensively. There are newer appliances and decent laminate countertops.

One positive is the decent-sized full basement. There’s a full bath down there that’s not mentioned in the listing. The house is cheap enough that you could finish the basement to make up somewhat for the lack of space on the main level. In this way, even though this place is smaller than 2 Edwards, there’s actual potential for more space with some money and effort if you don’t mind some rooms below ground.

This would be a nice starter house for a couple and maybe one kid. But I can’t imagine living in this place for long without feeling cramped.