Battening Down the Hatches in Bedford Park

While walking around the hood today I passed by a new construction multi-family property on Decatur Avenue (2969 to be precise) between Bedford Park Blvd. and 201st Street that we've been keeping an eye on since construction began.

It's on a cute, relatively quiet residential block, but the property itself is a cookie-cutter Fedders monstrosity. The thing has been completed for at least 6 months but it's just sitting there vacant... Once in a while you'll see a bored-looking real estate agent sitting outside with some sad little balloons hosting an open house. We stopped in to check the place out a few months ago, but were completely underwhelmed.

The listing agent describes the property as a "lavishly constructed 3 family home, 1yr old located in the much sought after Mosholu Parkway area of the Bronx.4BR + 2bth/3BR + 2bth/2BR + 1bth with a laundry/computer room in each apartment." Asking price is $649,000 for one side of the property (each side houses 3 separate apartments). Lavish is NOT a word we'd use to describe this property. More like... crappy, uninspired, shoddy, cheap pile of poop (you get the picture).

Anyway, today I noticed that there is a new gleaming white fence in front of the place. You could look at this development one of two ways:

1) The owner realizes they must actually put a little more money into the place if they have any hopes of selling it.

2) The owner realizes that the property is going nowhere fast and is literally battening down the hatches to protect the place against graffiti-drawing thugs looking for a fresh new canvass during this economic shit-sandwich the real estate world finds itself in. (But I guess they could always just hop the fence... dammit!)

BoogieDowner is eternally optimistic and will give the developer the benefit of the doubt and go with option #1.

~ErLu