Phase In, Phase Out

Like everything else in life, styles come and go. Cycles of what’s in and out change like the wind. Real estate patterns work the same way. One year, everyone is anxious to buy one type of house only for that style to become passé and a new style of home to become the rage.

I was thinking back about twenty years when all of the large houses on the tree-lined streets of Woodmere were selling in the $100,000 to $150,000 range, and even at those prices, it was hard to find anyone who would take on the project of purchasing these elegant old homes because of all the renovations needed to bring them up to speed.

Twenty years ago, most of the homes were actually built at the turn of the last century through the 1920s and had never been updated. Essentially they remained in their original condition: majestic on the outside, disasters on the inside from lack of maintenance. In the real estate business, we refer to them as “white elephants” because of the large amount of money required to make them livable again, let alone the amount required to upgrade them to modern standards.

Back then, even if you completely gutted an old house, the value of the property would still be half of what it cost you to do the job, which is why many of them sat empty for so long. Ironically, there were still some old homes (ruins really, I have no other way of describing them) that had homeowners living in them who had lived there for many years, and in some cases they were the children and grandchildren of the original owners. When we brokers were invited in to see the properties prior to putting them on the market, we were amazed that people were living there with ceilings falling down, rain coming in through the unmaintained roofs, and the once-elegant molding now either rotted or full of mold. Some of the people who owned those homes actually lived in only a select few rooms that they maintained, while leaving the rest of these grand homes to the elements.

Today, it’s hard to imagine that this area, which has made a complete return to its former grandeur, was ever in that run-down condition all those years ago. Savvy buyers who saw the future potential of those homes, as well as the details they contained took on the project of rehabilitating many of these grand homes, and when the first few pioneers succeeded in their rehabilitation, many others saw how beautiful they were when finished, and they also wanted to get into the act and started purchasing and rehabilitating their own homes.

Of course, some of these beautiful homes were beyond repair due to their extreme deterioration and had to be knocked down, but buyers with a lot of imagination and creativity built new homes with much of the old elegance and style of the previous homes and today, the streets of the Five Towns have become some of the most desirable, elegant, and scenic outside of New York City.

I began this story with the image of the elegant old homes on those tree-lined streets and I believe that restoring those old homes led to the phase of new homes being built on other parts of the Five Town that recreated those same old period details that the old homes once featured. It only shows you that even with the desire for new homes, the desire for the elegant old details never phases out. 

Anessa Cohen lives in Cedarhurst and is a Licensed Real Estate Broker (Anessa V Cohen Realty) with over 20 years of experience offering residential, commercial and management real estate services. You are invited to visit AVCRealty.com. She can be reached at 516-569-5007. Readers are encouraged to send any questions or comments by email to [email protected].