Bushwick Gentrification and the Zosia Mamet House Flip

In preparing for my tour this Saturday, April 2, of East Williamsburg and Bushwick (via the Municipal Art Society), I've grown to appreciate just how fascinating and vexing these neighborhoods can be.

The tour route includes several individual landmarks, but also passes many banal, workaday houses that played a hugely important role, filling in empty lots that scarred Bushwick after decades of neglect, thus positioning the neighborhood for its revival--and now, in some cases, furious gentrification.

The latter might be exemplified by the story of how actress (and Girls ensemble star) Zosia Mamet bought a pink house in Bushwick in November 2013--a 3-family building with a legal basement office--and, as Bushwick Daily reported, decided to flip it in less than a year. I took a look at the records, via StreetEasy: in 2006, the building sold for $699,000; in 2008, for $875,000. In 2013, Mamet and her boyfriend bought it for nearly $1.04 million; it sold last year for $1.375 million.

Sure, the value may have risen through renovation and, who knows, maybe they decided the building was a better investment than home. (I'm not blaming nor praising Mamet, whose work I like; she's just riding the real estate wave.) Though the photo in the real estate listing, with its tight focus on the house and tree, makes it look almost bucolic, Flushing Avenue is a noisy truck route with few trees.

However pleasant the pink house, it's not exactly in a historic district. It's across the street from a Herbalife distributor, for Pete's sake. And the apartment building next door is worn.

But the house is in within walking distance of some trendy Bushwick/East Williamsburg bars and restaurants, and a massive new development--with a troubling back story--is coming nearby. In other words, from the real estate perspective, the long term trend is good.

Note: the pink house is actually not on the regular tour route, but is on one of two paths to the subway from the tour ending point. I will be taking that path.

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