What can $250,000 get you in one of the most expensive cities in the world?
Perhaps a 20 percent down payment on a $1 million dollar three-family home in Brighton Beach? Or on a two-bedroom co-op in Chelsea? You could buy a one-bedroom apartment in Midwood, or one in Jackson Heights. Or even a two-bedroom apartment in Riverdale. Or a condo in Canairse that comes with its own deed separated parking spot (and pool access!).
But somewhere, somebody in this great city of over eight million New Yorkers just dropped that that amount — plus over $400 in monthly fees — to own a parking spot in a Brooklyn “car condominium.”
Opened in 1986, Park Slope Garage Condominium sits across from the Park Slope Food Coop at 841 Union Street. The garage was the first of its kind to win state approval to sell parking spaces as “condos.”
The first spots sold for around $29,000. At the time, people thought that price tag was insane — now the early adopters are laughing all the way to the bank.
“Everyone laughed when they came up with the idea,” said Dave Dixon, the owner of Dixon’s Bicycle, which is across the street from the garage.
Dixon, whose father opened the bike shop around 60 years ago, has seen the neighborhood change over the years from a place where “no one wanted to live,” in his words, to a place where people routinely pay $250,000 or more to park a car.
“This is the maximum gentrification,” he said of the parking spot’s price tag. “If you want to see the nicest cars, the latest hotties, you don’t even have to go to the dealership, you can just hang out in front of there.”
Back in 1986 when the garage first opened, the New York Times covered the news of the then-novel idea with skepticism. A year later, a writer for the paper praised the owner of the garage, Howard Pronsky, as a visionary after his once-mocked car condos sold like hotcakes.
“Howard Pronsky is vindicated, as people who sometimes seen as totally crazy often are in New York City,” Times columnist Bill Geist wrote.
Dixon agrees — everyone who mocked the idea is kicking themselves for not buying one when they were under $100,000, he told Streetsblog.
“We all would’ve bought them if we knew what it would be today,” he said.
Pronsky has since passed away, but the building remains under the control of his family, public records show. All of the “condos” have sold since Pronsky opened the garage — so any sales now are re-sales from current owners of individual spots.
The rare opportunity to buy a spot in the car condo stands out after housing — and housing affordability in particular — emerged as a top issue in last month’s Democratic mayoral primary.
Rents have risen by 36 percent since 2015, according to a Regional Plan Association report, City of Yes and Missing Middle Housing. And Park Slope is no different — the median asking rent for two bedroom apartment is $4,500, according to StreetEasy’s data dashboard.
Storing cars in a big, transit-rich city where most people don’t need to drive comes at the expense of using that space for other purposes — including housing.
Parking mandates — legal requirements to build a certain amount of parking per unit of new housing — further exasperate the city’s housing shortage by incentivizing developers to build fewer units in order to stay below the threshold that requires building a costly parking facility. (Mayor Eric Adams made some reforms to the city’s parking mandates in his “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity.”)
Removing parking mandate rules effectively “decouples” parking from housing, nudging developers to build homes for people rather than cars — which is one way to relieve pressure on the city’s housing market.
The car-condo sits in a neighborhood mostly built before parking mandates existed: Its existence is a result of smart, housing-over-cars pre-World War II urban planning. People who want and can afford a space can buy one, but Park Slope was built for mass transit, not cars.
Off-street parking will always exist — but if it’s not required by law, the market theoretically directs those cars to expensive off-street parking garages, according Rachel Weinberger, a transportation research and the Peter W. Herman Chair for Transportation at Regional Plan Association.
“[This parking spot] underscores the importance of unbundling parking from housing. In this scenario, the person who values parking can buy it,” said Weinberger. “Others, who don’t want a car, don’t have to pay the expense that would normally be inseparable from the cost of their home.”
Even then, the very existence of “one of the world’s priciest parking spots,” as the New York Post called it, underscores the depth of the city’s inequality.
“It shows the incredible resource disparity in the city,” Weinberger said. “While some people go wanting for shelter for themselves and their families, others can shelter their cars, a machine that is in some cases a necessity, but in many [cases] a luxury that in many cases adds little to no value to the economy and vibrancy of New York.”
The less-than-seven-foot-wide spot sold on Wednesday for around its asking price of $250,000 after only a few weeks on the market, The Post reported over the weekend. (The Post also erroneously reported the building has apartments as well; it does not.)
Market pressure
Despite the public and media’s sticker shock, to real estate professional it’s not that shocking — at least according to the agent selling it.
If people are going to spend exorbitant amounts of money on an apartment in Park Slope, what’s stopping them from tacking on a little more and having the convenience of never having to worry about street parking?
Alyssa Morris, the listing agent for the garage’s most recent vacancy, said that most people who buy the car condos are also buying a $5-10 million dollar townhouse in the neighborhood. Adding on a couple hundred thousand dollars to have a parking spot in a garage with 24/7 staff is seen as just another amenity, like outdoor space, which could raise the listing price of an apartment.
“It feels extreme maybe to many people, but it’s not extreme for that market,” Morris said. “It seems like a lot of money, and it is, I couldn’t afford it myself, but people pay a couple $100,000 more for an apartment that has private outdoor space versus not. So it’s sort of like that. You’re adding a value to your ownership by having these things.”
Parking in other nearby buildings can sell for a pretty penny as well, Morris said. Luxury condos in 145 Park Place, where a two bedroom apartment sold for around $1.5 million, often include a dedicated spot in the building’s off-site garage. But since the spaces are technically separate deeds, residents can sell them separately for similarly high prices, Morris said.
“They can sell [the parking spots] freely without selling their actual apartment,” she told Streetsblog while pulling up the Property Shark records. “One recently sold for $285,000,” she said with an air of disappointment. On Wednesday Morris was about to close a deal for a little under the $250,000 asking price on the Park Slope spot.
“Shoot, I could’ve gotten more,” she laughed.