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.

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.

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.

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.

• 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.

I guess that my fame is a bit more limited than I’d like to believe.

50 Cadman Ave

• MLS# 2180638 – Zillow Page
• Ask $465,000
• 3 bedrooms – 2 bath
• Taxes: $9,284 – Village Taxes: $1,033.12

For those of you who have been keeping up, this house was first mentioned back on March 15th by commenter Steele. At that point it was an exclusive by Hoffman East and was listed at $459K. Now it’s out on on MLS and is listed at $465K. So, a month and half on the market and no takers means…you raise the price six thousand dollars? This tells me that the seller is pricing the house based on their financial requirements, what they need to get for the house, not recent comps. Not a good strategy in any market, but a partucularly bad idea in this one.

As for the house itself, it’s nice enough. There’s no path to the front door, so you have to walk up the driveway and enter though the side door. I find this kind of thing very annoying, but it’s easily changed.

The kitchen is of decent size, recently updated but not top of the line. The countertops are green laminate and the stove is a cheap, electric model. Debra says that they must have spent a lot of money on the pulls, even though they are — in her words — hideous. The layout is well-done, though and the open floor plan flows nicely into the living room and dining room area. It makes the space seem bigger than it is and would probably be good for entertaining. The living room/kitchen/dining room areas have ugly tile on the floor, but the other rooms on the first floor have nice wood flooring.

On the first floor we also have two smallish bedrooms and a 3/4 bath (shower stall, no tub) and the den. The second bedroom isn’t too bad, but the third is pretty cramped.

The entire top floor is the master suite. The master bedroom is of decent size, bit certainly not huge. There’s plenty of closet space, although some of the closets are oddly shaped and/or crammed into corners around the roofline. The full bath on this level is OK. It’s got double sinks, actually two separate vanities, one on each side of the door as you walk in. The tub is small and the bathroom as a whole could use some updating, although it’s very usable as is.

There’s no door to the basement. There’s an open staircase leading down, making it seem more like part of the house. The basement is half-finished and the finished portion is sealed off in its own room. The finished room is big and is obviously being currently used as a bedroom. There’s a sump pump in the unfinished portion of the basement and all the appliances, the burner and the water heater are up on stands, which does concern me. But it was raining pretty hard when we were there and the basement did seem bone dry.

The backyard is big for Babylon and there’s a nice new deck. The detached garage is small and crammed with stuff. If we bought this house, we’d definitely want to put a shed in the back to make room for a car in the garage.

Bottom line? A nice house but way overpriced.  As I mentioned in the comments earlier, the most direct comp is 55 Livingston Ave. It’s a very similar house in a very similar location, although I think Livingston was nicer on the inside,  closer to the train, on a bigger lot and had lower taxes.  That house went for $445K, so I can’y see paying more than low 400′s for this place and  even that seems a bit much.

539 Gwynn Street

• MLS# 2173108 – Zillow Page
• Ask $379,990
• 4 bedrooms – 2 baths
• Taxes:$9,360 – Village Taxes: $852.75

As expected, the house is almost completely not updated.  However, other than the kitchen and baths, the rest of the issues are generally cosmetic. With lots of painting, removal of the awful paneling and similar work it could be a really nice house. That is, it could be with enough money spent on it.

The cabinets in the kitchen are original wood ones. The doors are probably not worth the effort to save, but you could get new doors and paint the rest. And there’s a couple of weird little drawers that waste space. It might be worth replacing it all, or some of it, anyway. The rest of the kitchen is worthless. The floor is awful. The appliances should be tossed out.

The rooms upstairs are quite big with reasonably high ceilings. The landing is wide and could be lined with bookshelves. The master is big and has three closets. The 2nd bedroom upstairs isn’t as big but is still a good size. There’s a small bath attached to the master. It has original blue fixtures that Debra likes. It’s only tiled around the bath, but the tiles there are mostly hideous. There’s a outline of blue tiles that matches the fixtures, and then someone put in darker blue marbleized tiles, most likely a lot later. We generally don’t like bath doors but these are amazing with 50s naked mermaids on them.

The bath downstairs is fairly big for the type of house and the era, but it’s horrible, tan fixtures and tile and they put in hideous “rustic” thick shelves to go with. There’s two more bedrooms, one a good size, the other smaller but still bigger than a lot we’ve seen.

The living room isn’t that big, but it’s not bad. It’s a real eat-in kitchen, and while they have it done in a kitchen-y way, you could do it more like a dining room and put the dining table there, it’s sort of a L-shaped living/dining room. Then you take a step down and there’s a long narrow dining room, but to be honest, with the eat-in kitchen, it probably wouldn’t get used except at holidays or if people were over.

There’s also a covered deck off the dining room/garage–the metal poles holding it up don’t look very new, but the fabric isn’t that old, it was totally dry even though everything’s flooded here. The yard is pretty big for Babylon, it’s a corner lot, but I can’t imagine there’s much traffic, it overlooks the park. The roof is 10-15 years old (or so the agent said.) The basement had been done a long time ago–half of it anyway. The ceiling is about 6.5 feet. There’s a bar! It needs work,but it’s bone dry–one good thing about looking at houses on a floody day.

As I approached the house it reeked of neglect.  The first thing that caught my eye was the row of bushes along the side of the house with a line of ice draped across them looking like it was the goal line in a football game I’d rather have been watching.  Looking up told why… there was no gutter along the edge of the roof.  One need only wonder where else the runoff water was lurking.  The aluminum siding on the front of the house was faded, accented only by the rust/paint stains that ran down several feet from each shutter, themselves hopelessly faded.  The shutters and stains showcased the windows in dire need of replacement.

Inside was no better.  Grandma sat in the living room breathing oxygen with her nurse at her side.  The family must have been hoping to get enough to pay off the last refi and get Grandma into a nursing home.  They had clearly done nothing to make the place show-ready.  Small rooms and closets were highlighted by the fact that the latter were boxed-out and the former were piled high and deep.  The flooring, appliances, cabinetry, window A/Cs, were all in decrepit condition.  Little if any of it touched in the 60 years since construction, save for layer upon layer of paint, the last coat of which was too long ago.  If it was located anywhere BUT the most overpriced suburb in the country, it would have been a complete tear-down job — and it may yet be.

The sad thing is that the owner (her family?) fail to realize that they actually sold the house piece by piece over the years in deferred upkeep.  Don’t want to spend $3k to replace the gutter?  Don’t want to replace the siding for $8k?  Windows for $5k?  Don’t want to update the appliances?  Or stain/seal the floors?  Just put it on the bill, which comes due on sale, right out of the price.  Pay now or pay later.

We saw this one and another open house that was admittedly in much better condition,  though itself still horrendously overpriced considering what we’re currently renting that essentially the same living space at 1/3 the monthly cost, in a location at least 20 min. less commuting time to Manhattan.

I was concernd that the spouse was caving just when the market itself was beginning to move our way.  Fortunately seeing these two houses convinced her to do two things: 1) Start looking for better/cheaper rentals than what we currently occupy, and 2) look for those rentals off of Long Island.

50 Paumanake Ave

• MLS# 2133440 – Zillow Page
• Ask $549,000
• 3 bedrooms – 1.5 bath – Colonial
• Taxes $11,266 – Village Taxes: $883.66

What does it mean when you show up for an open house and the home owner is there? It generally means bad news all around. A lot of things can happen with an owner in the house and very few of them are good.

Sixteen years ago when I was shopping for my first house (with my first wife) our Realtor brought us to a house owned by a middle-aged Italian couple. The man showed us around around his home, explaining all its the great features, including a cinder block barbecue grill that he was going to “throw in”, as if most people would load that up on their the truck and take it to their new place.

After the tour, we sat around the kitchen table and the man prepared to make his final sales pitch. He turned to me and said, “Now I’m going to explain to you some things about the house”. He then turned to my then wife and said, “..and you can listen too”.

The owner at 50 Paumanake didn’t make any similar gaffes. He was a nice, older gentleman and we enjoyed his stories about the house, which he obviously loves. Thereby hangs the tale.

This is a very charming house in the Indian section of Babylon Village.  It’s been on the market for a little while now, about two months or so. The taxes are very high, but the owner explained that he spent many years serving on various tax boards and it would have been difficult for him to file a tax grievance.

There are three bedrooms upstairs.  The master and second bedrooms are of decent size while the third is smaller, but still serviceable as an office, nursery or small child’s room. The master and  second bedrooms have hallway-like areas that lead up to the front dormer windows.

The living room has attractive oak floors and a marble fireplace.  It flows nicely around to the right into the dining room and makes a nice space for entertaining.  I’m not sure where I’d put my new, giant TV, but that’s a problem with most houses we’ve looked at.

The kitchen has a cute, country feel, but it’s a bit of a stretch to call it updated. The countertops are light pink laminate and the appliances are far from top of the line. There’s a good amount of space and some unique touches, including a built in gas grill with its own chimney for barbecuing.

There are some other nice bonuses to this house, including a sun room off the back of the house with a hot tub, washer and dryer on the main level and 1500 watts of solar panels on the roof.

Still, it’s very hard to see $549,000 for what is essentially a modest size, three bedroom colonial. The owner obviously loves his house and maybe that’s messing with his judgement a bit. We liked the home a lot and it would be a nice fit for us, but the price and the taxes really put it out of consideration at this time.