Two tasks in New York City seem like a complete nightmare: finding parking and affordable real estate. One listing on Zillow combines these two Herculean tasks into one horrifying real estate listing. It seems someone is selling one of the cheapest piece of real estate in the city — a parking space in Brooklyn, at $100,000.
This listing is from Keller Williams NYC and it doesn’t sound too bad, if you hate finding parking in Brooklyn:
MAKE AN OFFER!! PARKING SPACES available for purchase! Parking Garage CondominiumOwner must sell. All offers will be considered. The Parking Club, located in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn is your answer to convenient and trouble-free parking in New York City. Why spend your valuable time driving the neighborhood in search of parking when you can purchase a deeded space in a valet parking condominium.Located just a few blocks from the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, this secure indoor facility is professionally staffed 24 hours a day. There’s an owner’s lounge which provides complimentary water and coffee during the short wait for your car. Charging service for electric cars is also available! Can be purchased for private use or as investment. Seller has two spaces available for sale.
That does sound nice, much nicer than the constant negotiation of looking for and maintaining street parking in Brooklyn. First, there’s the protection you get from having your car lovingly slotted into a spot in a protected garage by professional valets. Just look at what years parallel parking on the mean streets of NYC did to our news editor Erik Shilling’s Honda Fit:
It’s not even just looking for a spot when you use your car to go somewhere. My New York-based coworkers seem to be constantly running out to switch their cars to the other side of the street in order to dodge $65 tickets over something called alternate-side parking. Parking regulations in NYC remind me of this classic scene from the show Futurama:
You can also rent a parking spot in a garage. Our own Raphael Orlove looked into it and he couldn’t find a spot for cheaper than around $350 a month in his Brooklyn neighborhood. So even if he got four tickets a month for ignoring opposite side parking, he still comes out ahead at $260 a month.
According to the NYC DOT, metered parking in this area of Brooklyn, known as Carroll Gardens, is pretty high for a borough outside of Manhattan. It costs $2.00 for the first hour and $4.00 for each additional hour. So you definitely want to avoid metered spots if you’re going to be parking your car all day (not that anyone would).
So when it all shakes out, if you (hypothetically) got mortgage for this $100,000 parking spot, your Zillow estimated payment would be about $438 (depending on your interest rate). That’s not far off from renting a spot in a bare bones garage, let alone one with 24 valet service with complimentary water and coffee while you wait. And once paid off, you own it free and clear. If you drive a lot of Brooklyn, it’s not the worst investment in the world, just not one that would be normal to us common folk in flyover country. I mean, I bought a whole three-bedroom house with a two-car garage in Detroit for less than that.
In New York, though, housing is different.
And while New York is a pain, it has nothing on Hong Kong, where someone bought a parking spot for $664,000 a few years ago. That’s much cheaper than this $970,000 parking spot in the same city.
The next cheapest listing in Brooklyn I can find right now is listed as a studio apartment, but the listing only features images of an Italian restaurant for $139,000. I hope that sweet deli slicer is included otherwise it’s no dice.