Thomas Breen photo
260 Humphrey St.
A three-family East Rock house sold for more than twice what it cost in 2005, while a nonprofit dropped a decaying Newhallville single-family home that it couldn’t find enough money to rebuild.
A house in the Annex, meanwhile, flipped for double its original value in just five months.
Those are three of 25 residential property transactions that took place in the Elm City over the past two weeks.
According to city land records, the three-family house at 260 Humphrey St. was sold by Scott Hunt to Ninghui Liang and Wensheng Zhang on Sept. 28. Liang and Zhang, who also own a two-family property around the corner at 39 Clark St., paid Hunt $568,888 for the two-and-a-half-story building at the corner of Humphrey and State.
That’s $303,888 more than the $265,000 that Hunt paid to buy the property in 2005, marking a sales price increase of nearly 115 percent compared to 13 years ago.
118 Bassett St.
Over in Newhallville, Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) sold a single-family home at 118 Bassett St. to Mohamed Aboutalib for $63,000. It paid $37,500 to buy the derelict property in a foreclosure sale in 2014.
Jim Paley is the founder and executive director of the local affordable housing nonprofit, which has spent the past four decades buying, gutting, and rehabilitating derelict properties and selling them to low-income, first-time homeowners. He said that his organization had to drop the one-and-three-quarter-story home across from Lincoln Bassett School because it couldn’t secure enough state and local funding to properly rehab the building.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have any other houses in the immediate vicinity,” he told the Independent. “It was a sort of a stand-alone. I would have very much like to have done that house. We were coming under criticism for having houses for landbanking.”
Paley said that NHS had applied for a recent round of state Department of Housing (DOH) Affordable Homeownereship subsidies to fund at rehab at 118 Bassett, but failed to secure the grant. NHS does not plan to sell off any other vacant homes that it currently owns in the neighborhood, even though it’s still waiting on promised funding from a 2015 state DOH grant to come through, Paley said
In Newhallville alone, he said, NHS has gut-rehabbed five hours on Lilac Street and is currently working on a sixth at 19 Lilac. It has completed work at 436 Huntington St. and 753 Winchester Ave., both of which are out on deposit but not yet sold, and they’re planning to rehab homes at 662 Winchester, 609 Winchester, 278 Newhall St., 161 Ivy St., 436 Huntington St., and 389 Huntington St., assuming that the 2015 DOH grant money comes in soon.
“We’re not having the same kind of luck in obtaining subsidies,” Paley said about recent struggles to get state and city money to fund some of NHS’s rehab projects.
Other Transactions
869 Orange St.
Land records show that in the past two weeks three Downtown and East Rock condominium units sold for well over $300,000 each.
On Oct. 1, Richard Hanley sold his three-bedroom condo at Armory Court at 869 Orange St., Unit 10E to Gregory Greenberg and Cressida Lui. The new owners paid $395,000 for the condo, which is $205,100 more than the $189,900 Hanley paid for the unit in 1999.
40 Temple Ct.
At 40 Temple Ct., Christopher and Elizabeth Duryea sold their two-bedroom condo at Unit E2 to David and Elizabeth Beckman for $552,500 on Sept. 27. The Beckman’s bought the property for $480,000 back in 2006.
And at 95 Audubon St., Ronald Eyerman sold his two-bedroom condo at Unit #28 to Yifeng Liu on Sept. 28 for $345,000. Eyerman bought the unit in 2004 for $315,000.
215 Dwight St.
In the Dwight neighborhood, Joshua Erlanger sold his two-story, two-family home at 215 Dwight St. to Elise Blackmer, Pilar Stewart, and Edwin Stewart for $485,000 on Sept. 25. That’s $240,000 more than Erlanger paid for the property at the corner of Dwight and Edgewood Avenue just five years ago when he bought it for $245,000.
14 Massachusetts Ave.
At 14 Massachusetts Ave. in the Annex, TC Time LLC, a holding company owned by Tim Cantrell, sold a single-family ranch house to Mynor Torres-Villagran for $257,000. TC Time LLC picked up the home in April 2018 for just $125,000.
455 Townsend Ave.
In Morris Cove, David Cipollini sold a three-family home at 455 Townsend Ave. to Sean Morston and Booker McJunkin on Sept. 26 for $220,000. Cipolli bought the property right across from Nathan Hale School in 2015 for $150,000.
55 Perkins St.
In Fair Haven, Brett Tiberio sold his single-family, board-and-batten home to Ronaando Jaime and Wanea Monique Taitt on Sept. 26 for $235,000, which is the exact amount that he paid to purchase the home back in 2012.
38-40 Sheffield Ave.
And in Newhallville, Baruch LLC, a holding company owned by Shmuel Levitin, bought a six-bedroom, multi-family apartment building at 38 – 40 Sheffield Ave. from Herman and Dwayne Carson for $298,000 on Sept. 26. That’s nearly $30,000 less than the Carsons paid for the property when they bought it in 2007.
This is really sad to see. Even the properties that look like they have done really well are mostly just average. Take the property in East Rock - arguably one of the hottest markets in town. The gain from $265K to $568K in 13 years is an average of about 6% per year compounded. If the same amount was invested in an S&P 500 index fund, the end value would have been $695 (and this included the loss in the great recession). Investing in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Charlston, or any other hot area would have brought even greater returns. Doing this analysis on most of the other properties in New Haven yields even worse results. Most do not even grow at the rate of inflation.
Not sure of the cause (crazy high taxes?) but it is sad that New Haven lags so far behind.