This fixer-upper one bedroom is not only a steal but a time capsule — and potential buyers can’t get enough.
Located at 53 W. 11th Str., this badly deteriorated Greenwich Village apartment may be the most popular unit on the Manhattan market right now: In the first four days that it was on the market, its broker showed it over 40 times and has dozens more requests to see it.
“People are intrigued,” Douglas Elliman listing agent James Lee Wall told Curbed of the reaction.
A floor-through top-floor walk-up, the apartment boasts an 18-foot A-frame roof, half of which is a skylight, beamed walls, a brick fireplace, wide-plank floors, various original details and a $685,000 price tag. The layout currently features an enormous street-facing room on one end, followed by two long, narrow rooms and, closing out the other end, a compact kitchen and a small windowed bathroom.
It’s in a 15-unit, five-story classical-style brownstone built in 1891. The building “is mainly owner-occupied and not investor-friendly, yet does feature a liberal sublet policy,” according to a StreetEasy description.
The former tenants — a now-deceased elderly artist couple who vacated the unit a few years ago, after inhabiting it since the 1960s — left a number of personal touches in the apartment, including a painted-on zebra-print rug and floral decals on the kitchen ceiling, bathroom door and armoire. Wall told Curbed they also left the unit packed with their various possessions, including two 6-foot stuffed lions.
The unit is in need of a gut renovation, or as the listing frames it, owners should be ready to “bring your vision and creativity.”
The building appears to be mostly made up of one bedrooms, some rentals in the $3,000-a-month range and some sales. This unit seems to be the only one to stay staunchly in the un-renovated past — most other apartments at the address look to have been updated to modern tastes.
