The new, most expensive home in Windsor Terrace is not some glorious rowhouse facing Prospect Park or a wood-framed, 200-year-old beauty.
But the home at 107 Terrace Place, which just sold for $1.98 million, boasts a feature the competition is missing, something even more valuable than original molding or parquet floors a two-car garage.
It also comes with the neighborhood’s quickly increasing cachet.
“Windsor Terrace always had this suburban feel, but now it’s getting much cooler, too, and I think this house, which is two blocks from the park and the cafes, is the perfect marriage of the two Windsor Terraces,” said CORE broker Doug Bowen, who had the listing.
The five-bedroom detached home was actually built in 1960 by a bridge contractor as his own residence, which accounts for its unique layout.
The current owners, who purchased the property for $1.12 million in 2011, undertook a full renovation to open up the lower floors, creating a grand 3,500-square-foot home of modern proportions, with two bedrooms and a kitchen, dining and living rooms that sharing an open space. A den and game room are on the floor below, alongside the garage.
The previous record in Windsor Terrace was for a traditional limestone townhouse at 18 Sherman Place, which sold for $1.9 million in 2007, during the last boom.
As prices continue to rise to the north, buyers who want to stay in Brooklyn, rather than following their parents to the suburbs, are bidding up prices all over.
“When a typical brownstone is going for $3 million and even $4 million now, it’s going to push people to Windsor Terrace, and it’s going to push up the prices in Windsor Terrace,” Bowen said.
The sellers are actually bucking this trend. They just had their second child and have decided to relocate more upstate to Rhinebeck, since the husband splits his work in the high-end summer camp sector between Manhattan and upstate.
The buyers, meanwhile, are leaving behind a rental in Park Slope. They were among a number of bidders for the home, which was originally listed at $1.95 million.
And even though they will be waving goodbye to their beloved Slope, Bowen said his family will be gaining so much more.
“The joy of never having to fight for a parking space again,” he said. “Can you imagine?”