Finding a Vacant Lot to Buy. At first, that didn’t occur to Keith Strand. After all, who builds a house in Manhattan?
But when he could find no affordable houses to renovate, he did what an architect would do. He abandoned the hunt for a house and instead went looking for a plot of land to build on.
Mr. Strand, 53, who grew up in Colorado Springs, first came to New York in the 1970s with the group Volunteers in Service to America to work on Bronx housing projects. He met his wife, Cydney, 58, who is from St. Louis, through her former husband, who was also a Vista volunteer.
When the Strands married in 1991, they rented in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. They also owned a two-acre wooded plot in Dover, Vt., where they spent four months building an environmentally friendly summer cabin.
They could afford to buy a home only if they received rental income, so they bought a two-family town house in Clinton Hill for $125,000. They set out to renovate the entire place, never quite finishing, and giving their tenants a break on the rent for tolerating endless construction.
The Strands found themselves property rich and cash poor. “We had this huge asset but not much money,” said Mr. Strand, whose architectural practice specializes in renovations, conversions and office interiors. He said the house had “gone up so much in value” that they planned to sell it and move to Brattleboro, Vt., near their cabin, where they garden and play golf. But when negotiations for a house there fell through, they changed their minds and decided to stay in New York. This time, they looked for a way station while they concentrated on finding another house, preferably in Manhattan, where neither had lived.
“I am always ready for change,” said Ms. Strand, an educator for Lighthouse International, which helps those with impaired vision. “Staying in one place is hard for me.”
In 2002, they sold the Clinton Hill home for $740,000 and bought a two-bedroom wreck in a condominium building in the Mount Morris Park Historic District in Harlem for $170,000. Mr. Strand spent six weeks making it habitable.
It wasn’t easy to downsize. They immediately began hunting for a bigger home in the neighborhood, which they loved, with its wide streets and welcoming neighbors.
“Keith kept saying, ‘Don’t worry, it’s just temporary,’ and I am watching property values skyrocket, saying, ‘How is it temporary?’ ” Ms. Strand said. “They were beyond our price already. I was sure we just missed the boat.”
At that point, $500,000 to $600,000 bought a 15-foot-wide brownstone shell, Mr. Strand said. He calculated that restoring one would cost more than buying a house in livable shape.
In his old neighborhood, he had created a two-story house from a tire-repair garage for clients who had bought the garage for $200,000. He figured he could buy a similar structure in Harlem.
“There are a fair number of one-story carriage houses, and I basically walked around looking in the neighborhood for those types of buildings,” he said. Many were occupied by small churches. He found only one for sale, a little brick box with a missing roof on West 123rd Street.
A man outside was filling a Dumpster. Mr. Strand had assumed a recent buyer was cleaning up. But a for-sale sign was soon posted. The carriage house was attached to the brownstone next door. The owner, seeking $1.6 million, refused to split the properties.
What he needed, Mr. Strand realized, was a vacant lot. Starting from scratch would let him build just what he wanted, in an environmentally sensitive way.
Vacant lots were advertised as “investment properties.” Fifteen-foot-wide lots, many filled with trash or weeds, were selling for $150,000 to $275,000. Some lots, at 50 by 100 feet, were too large. Others were too shallow.
A plot on Manhattan Avenue near 123rd Street had possibilities, but a large tree in front interfered with plans for a one-car garage. Regulations from the Department of Parks and Recreation strictly govern the removal of street trees.
His wife disliked some of the plots. “Keith does all the legwork and then drags me out at the end to say, ‘What do you think?’ ” she said. “My input is all touchy-feely. I don’t do any of the rational stuff.”
Ms. Strand had only one hesitation when it came to a 15-by-100-foot lot on the same block as the carriage house, available for $159,000. How could a house possibly fit into that skinny space? But Mr. Strand noted that their living room was 14 by 16 feet. He knew he could work with the size. The Strands first offered $120,000, before buying the lot for $150,000 in June 2003. “I was, like, who else would want this?” Mr. Strand said.
They found out a few months later. There were two vacant lots, each 15 feet wide, adjacent to theirs. The owner of those found investors who wished to combine all three lots and build a larger building on the 45-foot-wide parcel. Mr. Strand was willing to sell for $450,000 if he could find an alternate lot to build on. But there were none, even at that price. “I did scour the neighborhood and noted any vacant lots that I saw,” he said. “A lot were attached to buildings in some way, either for parking or easements.”
Finding a Vacant Lot to Buy. One possibility was a lot on West 124th Street that is informally used as overflow from an adjacent Green Thumb community garden. “No way I am going to be the guy who goes in” and impinges on a Green Thumb site, he said.
Ms. Strand didn’t want to sell at all. “For what?” she asked. “To buy another property we didn’t like as much to make the developers happy? I didn’t like those other properties once I got used to this one. I had already adopted it as my block.”
So they went ahead with the construction. It took nearly two years before their home was habitable. Including the land, they spent a total of $900,000. They sold the condominium for $486,000 and relocated two blocks away last fall. For several weeks they had no gas or hot water, and showered at the gym or at friends’ homes.
“Cyd made me promise she would never live in a construction site again,” Mr. Strand said. “I seem to be unable to keep that promise.”
Some old-timers on the block remember the three identical brownstones that once stood on the parcels. The Strands assume the house that was on their lot had burned down. The remnants of the stone foundation are incorporated into their concrete foundation.
Now, their 15-by-70-foot three-story house has radiant heat throughout, a garden in back, and a gabled roof with solar panels that produce about 20 percent of the house’s electricity. Mr. Strand’s office is on the ground floor, as is a garage just big enough for their car.
Leaving from Harlem, the drive to Vermont is 45 minutes shorter.
“When you live with an architect, the house is never finished,” Ms. Strand said. They have yet to panel the entry hall of their new house. The Harlem house proves that “a small-scale project can be conserving and beautiful at the same time,” Mr. Strand said.
Source: New York Times
