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.

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.

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.

Homes in Babylon

Numbers haven’t changed all that much since I last did this in April. Some interesting new house to look at this week, including 2 Edward Ave, 19 Nehring Ave and 40 Bacon Lane. There’s also 78 Wampum, a house that should be priced in our range but isn’t.

109 Washington is gone. A commenter reported it as being in contract. As I said in the open house report, I felt it was overpriced but I could see someone really overpaying for it. We’ll have to see what the numbers are when and if it finally sells.

90 The Crescent has been reported as being in contract, but it’s still on the MLS last I checked. There are issues with that house being sold that I’ve agreed not to talk about here. We’ll discuss it more once the sale is final.

This is an open discussion thread, so I invite any and all readers to pipe up and say something. Feel free to leave a comment and ask a question, make an observation, tell us what you’re up to or just introduce yourself and say hi.

I’m very interested in hearing fellow home shoppers, especially their impressions of any open houses that they’ve seen, but I’d also like to hear from any sellers and their experiences and observations.

I’m posting this “sticky”, which means that it will stay at the top of the page even if I post new stuff afterward. If you’re accustomed to stopping by and glancing at the top of the page to see if there’s new stuff, scroll on down a bit before you click away.

Enojy your weekend, everyone. Happy hunting.

Afterwards, we stopped by The Friendly Neighborhood Comic Book Store on Udall Rd in W. Islip for Free Comic Book Day. It was late, so most of the good freebies were gone, but we got a few second-tier ones and I bought my son a Batman graphic novel. We lingered a while to discuss the Wolverine movie with the proprietor and some of the clientele. All in all, a successful day.

Deb and I (and Aurora) did get out to see an open house today, 50 Cadman.  It’s a cute little house and we liked it some. A full open house report will be coming some time this week.

Traffic on HIB has been down a bit. Yesterday was the slowest day we’ve had in months. I know that my writing has been off a bit, but I also expect that the real estate fever has cooled off some.

And, of course, I just had to share this:

Snark Attack [NY Times]

AS unsold properties proliferate and encounters with the scalpel fail to move them, some Real Estate listings and community news for New York City sellers are being undermined by an often nameless enemy.

Even as they rearrange the furniture and pray for a sale, their apartments are being picked apart online by anonymous strangers.

Brutally frank discussions about specific listings can draw hundreds of comments on sites like StreetEasy, Curbed and Brownstoner, where traffic has increased as buyers and interested observers seek insight into the turbulent real estate market.

Commenters scour these Web sites, attend open houses or study brokers’ advertisements and then post their analyses.

I myself am guilty of snark from time to time, but I always try to be fair and honest when talking about a house. Even that can get some owners worried, as recent events show.

We saw two houses, one very attractive and one…well…not. It was a Goofus and Gallant experience, if you know what I mean.

Nothing really on deck for this weekend. It looks to be beautiful weather, but nothing out there really interests me, so this is going to have to hold you guys for a while.

109 Washington Street

• MLS# 2175366 – Zillow Page
• Ask $499,900
• 3 bedrooms – 1.5 bath
• Taxes $10,039 – Village Taxes: $875.00

One of the keys to good house hunting is not to let yourself fall in love with any particular piece of real estate. While I didn’t actually fall in love with 109 Washington, there were some definite romantic stirrings that I needed to be wary of.

This is a three bedroom, split level house and boy is it split. There are actually four seperate levels in this house. On the main level, as you walk in the house are the living room, dining room and kitchen. The livinn room and dining room have nice, hardwood floors. The kitchen isn’t big and while it’s well kept, it’s very old. The cabinetry probably pre-dates my high school graduation and it’s cheap laminate. In the back of this level is a nice, screened in porch which leads out to the backyard, but more about that later.

One level down we have the den/family room, laundry room, half bath and a storage area. This level is a bit below grade, but it’s not a basement. The den area is big, but the walls are covered in painted paneling and the floor is done in carpet tiles. The half bath is OK, if somewhat bare bones. The space on this level isn’t well laid out and moving a wall or two would make much better use of the space.

One level up from the main level we find two bedrooms and the full bath. The bedrooms are not huge, but they’re of decent size and there’s good closet space. The bathroom is original to the house, classic 50′s tile and fixtures. Debra really likes that, but most people probably won’t. There’s some unfortunate wallpaper in the bathroom, but that could be remedied.

On the top level we have the biggest bedroom, the penthouse if you will.

Out the back , the yard runs into the Southards Pond nature preserve. Actually, because there’s no back fence the backyard is more or less part of the nature preserve. The preserve intrudes on the yard about ten feet past the property line.  I can imagine sitting out there (or in the screened-in porch) and imagining that you’re in a little house in the middle of the forest.

This is a great house with a lot of potential.  The layout is decent and the backyard abutting the nature preserve is truly special.  However,  I can’t see a half million for a modest-sized home that needs this much updating.

46 Lee Ave

• MLS# 2163467 – Zillow Page
• Ask $309,225
• 4 bedrooms – 2 bath
• Taxes: $7,027 – Village Taxes: $836.20

When the only thing good about a house is the price, it’s probably best to move on. At $309K and down near the water off Little East Neck Rd South, 46 Lee is a tempting proposition for prosepctive homeowners looking to slip into the Village on the cheap.

This is a REO, a bank-owned, foreclosure. The place is caught in mid-renovation. The bathrooms are half-finished. The kitchen is mostly done.

But something is very wrong with this house. The floor is seriously buckled up on both the ground and second floors. None of the walls seem plumb. Either the house has settled oddly or there’s something even worse wrong with it.

Apart from that, the layout isn’t very livable. The placement of the kitchen and dining areas leaves a big, open, barely usuable wasted space right in the middle of the house. If you wanted a decent place to sit, relax and watch TV, you’d have to use one of the downstairs bedrooms as a den/family room.

So, two open houses this past weekend, one on Saturday and one on Sunday. Both of them were interesting, but not really in a good way.

21 Cameron Ave

• MLS# 2170796 – Zillow Page
• Ask $499,000
• 5 bedrooms – 2.5 bath
• Taxes: $11,112 – Village Taxes: $1,342.70

Surprisingly, we liked this house a lot more than we thought we would. It’s an odd home, both odd looking and oddly laid out. It very poor curb appeal, with its blue-gray painted cement and the flat, jumbled up architecture. The house kinda looks like two houses stuck together with a little join piece in the middle.

The main area of the house is open floor plan. There are no walls or dividers between the living room, dining room and kitchen. The kitchen is against the far wall and is nicely updated. The living room area is big and spacious with nice hardwood floors.

A few steps up and set of french doors separate the master suite from the open plan area. The master bedroom is fairly small with decent closets. The master bathroom is nicely tiled, floor to ceiling. There’s a steam shower and a big spa tub. The fixtures are European, a little different than their American counterparts, but there’s one thing missing from this master suite…a wall. There is no wall or divider between the master bedroom and the master bath. There a little nook for the toilet to give some privacy, but no door or screen. This takes the open floor plan concept way too far, in my opinion.

There are four more bedrooms, all of moderate or small size. One on the same side as the master and three more on the other side of the house, stacked up on top of each other. There’s a bottom floor bedroom, a top floor bedroom and a “mezzanine” level bedroom. There’s another bath on this side of the house too, tiled in the same style as the master, with euro fixtures and a small urinal as an added bonus. That’s right, a urinal.

There’s no backyard, per se. Just like the other Cameron house we looked at, this one is backed up to Railroad Ave. There’s just a few feet from the back door to the back fence and Railroad Ave is only a foot or so behind that. Unlike 35 Cameron, however, there’s a significant amount of side yard space that could be put to good use with a proper fence.

We did really like this house and I could see us living there if the price was right. There’s plenty of room inside for us and our things, although there’s very little in the way of raw storage space since there’s no basement or attic area for that.

33 Mason Ave

• MLS# —- – Zillow Page
• Ask $399,900
• 3 bedrooms – 1 bath
• Taxes: $5,628.23 – Village Taxes: $508.50

It’s funny that Debra and I walked into this house and both of us immediately got the impression that the place was similar to our Grandmother’s place. Obviously we have different Grandmothers, so it’s a bit of oddness…or maybe not.

By the way, this one isn’t on MLS as of this writing. I only found the house because I saw the Coach Realtors sign as I was driving home from work.

There are only two words for this place, old and tiny. Nothing on this house has been touched probably since Eisenhower was president. I peeked into the utility room and the burner was this giant, iron, monstrosity that was probably older than me. The realtor said that it was likely a coal conversion, hence the little door on the front. I’ve never seen anything like it.

The first floor has a small kitchen, a small living room, a utility room and a laundry room. There’s a small table crammed into the kitchen, but other than that there’s no place to actually sit down and eat.

Upstairs there’s a neat, little landing at the top of the stairs, a tiny master and two microscopic other bedrooms. The bathroom is also small and also dates back to the 50′s.

The house needs major repair and renovation, a new heating system, new roof, kitchen, bath and that’s just for starters. Problem is that even if you did all that, you’d be left with a nicely updated, but still tiny and barely usable house. Since the house is backed up almost to the property line, you couldn’t really expand out the back. You might be able to add a piece on to the front of the house to get more space, but it hardly seems worth it.

It’s too bad, because it’s a cute, little, Dutch colonial. It’s got a lot of charm. But I can’t see anyone buying this house to actually live in unless they’re desperate. But I don’t know that the numbers really work out for buying the property, knocking down the house and building a new one.

I’d like to add my comments on the open houses from last weekend.

As for the George Street house, I’m not sure what the big deal is. The house is cute, that’s about it. There were a ton of people there so much that we were on our own (which I thoroughly enjoy much better than given a tour) but I scooted out of there quickly. Nice bedrooms upstairs but the master downstairs with no closet, the narrow bathroom, the plan to stud 10 different rooms in the basement and the maze of fences in the backyard sent me running, not the price.

I really loved the Park Ave. house. The huge dining room, original farmhouse sink, living area with sliding doors to the patio is great. Definitely would need to do a kitchen makeover to add cabinets. However, I do think that there is some wasted space with the “picture alley.” Agent said that it was the wrap around porch, I would have loved it more! I’m wondering if I ran into your wife here. There was a woman upstairs (blonde hair) with baby in carrier making jokes about the little step ups into and out of the rooms. I’m assuming not very conducive to a happy house hunting experience.

More so than Park, I surprised myself with how much I loved the Paumanake house. The bedrooms are overly large, the bathrooms are newly renovated, the kitchen still has charm with the bbq, the outside/inside slate floor room with hot tub and the finished basement is more than I ever expected from this house. I’m curious as to why it hasn’t been sold yet? Maybe the taxes?

I’m also curious if Blog knows any of my family dirt? Ha ha!

Hi Babylonian. Yes, that sounds like my wife you saw at the Park house. Tall, blond and snarky, that’s my missus.

Blog has already remarked on the situation at 50 Paumanake in earlier comments. I liked that house very much, but I think the price is really out of line. It was originally listed at $549K and now sits at $499K. That’s a big number for what is essentially just a very nice, three bedroom house. It’s in nice, move-in condition, but you couldn’t really call it “updated”. I don’t see any recent comps that would qualify that house as a half million dollar piece of real estate.

Plus there are the taxes to consider, which are pretty high. I think that they could be brought down a lot if they were aggressively grieved.

Something about the 44 George house really calls to me, despite its many negatives. Obviously it has great curb appeal and I’d love to live close in to the heart of the Village. On the other hand, it’s on a moderately busy street, across from the condos and an active post office. It’s pretty small, only has one bathroom , etc.

Still, I’d love to live there for the right price.

The comments below are mostly hers.

76 Clinton St

• MLS# 2167330 – Zillow Page
• Ask $399,000
• Prior Sales: none
• 4 bedrooms – 2 bath
• Taxes: $8,734 – Village Taxes: $483.00

This was the first house on the agenda and there were a lot of people there.

Wow, this is an interesting house. In a bad way. There were so many tchotches! Debra had the baby in the Baby Bjorn and thought she was going to turn around smash something.

The entire place was old and smelled it. The kitchen was small. It had fewer cabinets and less counter space than we have now. There were hideous wood-printed cabinets–although there was real wood inside, so I assume the carcasses are the originals. If you could open the wall to the dining room and took over some of that space and completely redid the kitchen it might be nice. Might.

The bathrooms are almost all original, but again, not in a good way. The walls are covered with that plastic marbleized stuff they did back in the 50s. Ugly. Debra told me that she’d heard about this stuff, but she’d never actually seen it.

Apparently the owner is a carpenter–which doesn’t explain the kitchen, but explains the weird closets all over the place, and the wood nailed on the walls in the bedroom downstairs. There was a scary doll in a full-sized cradle in one of the upstairs bedrooms. They had a huge finch cage–Aurora liked the birds.

The place did have a nice large unfinished basement with ceilings we could walk under, although not high ceilings. The garage had been built into so it’s doubtful that anything bigger than a Smart car would fit into it. There’s storage above and inside. The yard is small but OK and there’s a cute shed/playhouse. I think they keep birds in there in warm weather.

Debra’s verdict on the house: waaaay too much work for us. Needs a new kitchen and two new baths, stat. All the rooms need freshening–new doors, etc. It could be a nice house with a lot of money sunk into it, but we’re talking a lot of money.

There were quite a few people at the open house, but I think most of them agreed with Deb — too much work for that price.

44 George St

• MLS# 2162510 – Zillow Page
• Ask $399,900
• Prior Sales:
  07/02/2007 – $360,000
  11/01/2004 – $310,000
• 3 bedrooms – 1 bath
• Taxes $7,326 – Village Taxes: $806.26

Like Yogi says, it’s deja vu all over again. We saw this house back in June of 2007. You can read the first open house report. We really liked it back then and I was a little disappointed when it sold. So, here we are, a year and a half later, and it’s back on the market.

They fixed the broken tiles in the bath, and put in a new pedestal sink, but the bathroom is still as incredibly narrow as ever. It’s so small that you might consider giving up space in the living room to enlarge it a bit.

The biggest change to the house since the last time we saw it is that they’ve started to finish the basement. It’s been studded and the electrics put in, but the drywall and such isn’t done yet. They were putting in another bathroom, a playroom and maybe a laundryoom. The finished ceiling would be about 6.5′ or 7′ if lucky. Apparently the estimate was $17,500 and they paid $5000 already. They will include the plans with the house. And they put in a teeny above ground pool, it’s about 3′ deep. There were a good few people there–not as many as at Clinton, though.

The big problem here is the price. The house sold for $360K just a year and a half ago. There really haven’t been any major renovations. How do you justify $40K more when the market has dropped through the floor in that time period?

99 Park Ave

• MLS# 2166017 – Zillow Page
• Ask $479,000
• Prior Sales:
  05/26/2005 – $455,260
  06/07/2000 – $134,000
• 3 bedrooms – 2 baths
• Taxes $8,114 – Village Taxes: $862.60

Debra says, “Wow. I love this house.” They did a great job fixing the place up. They replaced all the doors, even closet doors.

There’s a lot of room downstairs, although the flow in the living room is a bit odd. It’s possible that they don’t use it much if at all. There’s a weird little side bit with no furniture in it. It might might be a good place for a desk.

The dining room is huge and lovely. There’s a little bump out on one side that’s very pretty . Debra says she’d put a window seat in it.

The kitchen is very open. It’s all original with a great farmhouse sink, but very little counter space. It’s OK as-is, but it’s going to need some updating sooner rather than later. They have a couple of pieces of freestanding cabinetry for storage and to give counter space. There’s a nice full bath behind the kitchen. Debra really loves the farmhouse sink. It’s similar to the one her sister has out in her Montauk house.

The great room is wonderful, other than the gas fire-stove thing. It looks like a wood-burning fireplace but it’s gas with a remote. I don’t know how hot it gets, but the Realtor did say that the owners spend all their time in the great room with their year-old baby.

The staircase is scary to the upstairs is scary. It lists to one side. It might just need a little work, maybe a new banister, to make it safer. Still it’s bothersome.

The front bedroom is nice, a little small. There’s another nice, smallish bedroom in the back. Unfortunately, the only bathroom upstairs is inside the back bedroom. You have to enter that bedroom to get to the bathroom. The third bedroom is tiny.

The yard is huge and lovely and the deck is nice. It’s quiet inside with the windows shut. But during the summer the windows will be open and we’ll be hearing the road noise from this busy corner.

This report covers three open houses from Sunday, March 8th. As always, Interested in your impressions or any other info about those houses that you care to share in the comments.

29 Stowe Ave

• MLS# 2159033 – Zillow Page
• Ask $391,667
• 3 bedrooms – 2 bath
• Taxes $8,297 – Village Taxes: ???

I have to say that the wife and I ended up liking this house a lot more than we thought we would. The front of the house is odd-looking, the added on, second floor dormer really looks crudely tacked on. But it’s not quite as bad as the MLS picture makes it seem. This house obviously used to be a cap, now it’s a weird-looking colonial.

The downstairs area is nice and spacious, although the layout could be better. The living room is vary large for a house this size and is set up nicely for a big screen TV. There’s even a big closet in the living room, probably left over from the conversion of part of this space from a bedroom. The kitchen is big, but there’s a good amount of wasted space. It’s pitched as “updated”, but it’s pretty cheaply done. The counters are faux granite laminate and the cabinets are Home Depot specials. A nice-sized dining area completes the downstairs, but the decor leaves something to be desired.

Upstairs, the master bedroom is a good size, although an odd shape, and there’s a decent, walk-in closet. The other two bedrooms are pretty small though and that could be an issue down the road.

The place has two full baths, which is a big plus for us, even though the missus thought that the upstairs bath’s peach decor was hideous. Unfortunately there’s no basement, meaning we’d probably have to use the garage as a storage area.

This is a house with some potential, especially if we decide we can live with West Babylon schools, but there’s no way I can see paying $390,000 for it.

29 Lowerre St

• MLS# 2156399 – Zillow Page
• Ask $379,900
• 2 bedrooms – 1.5 bath
• Taxes: $6,884 – Village Taxes: $633.37

Debra went to go see this one without me. She said it was a nearly perfect house, very cute and well laid out, but missing that all-important third bedroom. Normally I wouldn’t even think about a two bedroom house, but the ad mentioned a “granny attic”, so there was the possibility of a third bedroom and Debra went out to investigate.

Apparently, the granny attic isn’t suitable for a bedroom conversion, which shouldn’t really surprise me. The house was built in the 20′s. If there were some relatively painless way to add a third bedroom, someone would have done it by now. There is an office on the first floor that supposedly had been used as a bedroom in the past, but it’s way too small to be of any practical use for that purpose.

175 Park Ave

• MLS# 2123370 – Zillow Page
• Ask $574,900
• 4 bedrooms – 2.5 bath
• Taxes $9,000 – Village Taxes: $900.00

This is the first of five homes planned to be built on the former Knights of Columbus hall land on the corner of Ralph Ave and Park Ave. I watched this house get built over the course of many months, so when the place was done, I jumped at the chance to see the inside.

Well, the inside isn’t all that exciting. The builder has left the inside unfinished to that the eventual buyer (heh) can pick the flooring, kitchen cabinets, paint colors, fixtures, etc. There’s not much to see there except concrete floors and primed drywall.

The layout of the place is decent. There are four good-sized bedrooms upstairs. Downstairs we have the kitchen, dining room, living room and den/family room. The house is built on a slab, so the utility room and laundry area are also the first floor. I questioned the Realtor about this and he said the water table was too high to put in a basement in. I find this hard to believe, but whatever.

So the word is that that the builder is throwing in all kinds of extras and “everything is negotiable”. Everything, I expect, except the price. The bulder is more likely to put in exotic hardwood floors, teak cabinets and rare South American granite at no extra charge than go much lower on the price. This house is on the biggest plot of the five pieces carved out of the former K of C property, so they’re going to try to get as much for it as they can. Since they likely plan to build the exact same house four more times, the price they get for this one is going to be the max limit they get for any of the other four.

Of course, first they have to sell this one, which is no easy chore. Who wants to buy a house for $575K that faces a fairly busy street, has no basement and sits in the middle of a giant plot of dirt? The are plenty of fine homes in Babylon at this price point that are much better values.