Hot Properties: Bedford-Stuyvesant
BKLYN
By Alec AppelBaum

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Billy Joel boasted of walking "through Bedford-Stuy alone" in 1980, when much of the nation equated the neighborhood with urban despair. Now someone might brag about getting a brownstone under $500,000. "Bedford-Stuyvesant is not the well-kept secret anymore," says Juanita Bobbitt, a Corcoran Group broker who grew up on Quincy Street and has sold several houses in Stuyvesant Heights, a handsome subsection near the A train's Nostrand Avenue stop. Three young professionals have bought homes on MacDonough Street between Ralph and Howard avenues in the past year.

One is Nestor Pineda, a concierge at the Ritz-Carlton Downtown who lived in Manhattan for 15 years until sticker shock made him revise his dream of buying a Harlem brownstone. He and his partner, Mauricio Granada, closed on a $475,000 Stuyvesant Heights brownstone in November. "In Manhattan I hardly knew my neighbors next door," he says while driving to Home Depot for fix-up gear. "Here I have a neighbor who brought me some corn muffins she baked. I felt like I was in Middle America." Pineda even came home during the early December blizzard to find another neighbor shoveling both their walks. "He told me not to get used to it," Pineda says with a laugh.

Apparently nobody walks through Bedford-Stuy alone for long, these days. "You meet people on the street, share phone numbers, and then they're your friends," says Floortje Dollo of Greene Avenue. But the landscape isn't all as charming as the MacDonough block. Dollo sees "cheap housing" going up in a hurry, and tales circulate of buyers purchasing brownstones for less than $500,000 and promptly offering them for more than $725,000. Despite that frenzy, Dollo says some landlords let garbage sit where dogs can get at it, and services—from restaurants to greengrocers to dry cleaning—are still lacking.

Then there's the crime. "This is not Mister Rogers' neighborhood," says Noah Budnick, who rents a floor near Von King Park. Community gardens and block associations promote safety; Mandissa Turner, who recently moved near Pineda, cited the block association's vigilance as a selling point. Pineda doesn't want to see that tight-knit group of neighbors broken up by economic pressures. "I wouldn't like to see people who have been there so many years gone because they couldn't afford the rent." But since he paid nearly 28 times what his seller bought the house for originally, whatever tenant he finds will have to come from different means as well.

• did you know: Noah Budnick, projects director for Transportation Alternatives, says riding a bike "makes Prospect Park ten minutes away and BAM five minutes away."
• trains: The A and C stop at Nostrand Avenue and the C stops at Ralph Avenue, both near the commercial strip on Fulton Street. The G, which doesn't go into Manhattan, stops throughout the neighborhood. Nestor Pineda claims he can get to lower Manhattan in 20 minutes.
• insider's tip: Floortje Dollo says individual blocks vary in cleanliness and appearance, and the ones closer to Fort Greene tend to be tidier.

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