A group of residents from two Brooklyn neighborhoods, Ditmas Park West and Beverly Square West, are crying foul against the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, claiming that the agency has favored the establishment of historic districts in brownstone-heavy areas and snubed those neighborhoods with Victorian-style homes. The kerfuffle is gaining traction with Borough President Marty Markowitz, who said in a letter last week that the commission needs to be cautious in its landmarking. “It is not appropriate public policy to place [Victorian Flatbush] on hold while purely Brownstone Brooklyn is pursued,” Markowitz said. “There must be an equitable balance.”

In Carroll Gardens, preservationists seeking landmark status for a greater portion of the neighborhood are being met with opposition from residents and merchants who want to retain the right to determine their properties’ appearances. Guidelines stipulated by the neighborhood’s current two-block historic district are also expensive, they say. The Landmarks Preservation Commission requires that designs of windows, staircases and front gates in the historic district evoke a late 19th century feel, and opponents say some property owners — especially the area’s elderly Italian immigrant population — won’t be able to front the cost of replacements if the district is expanded. Still, those who are in favor of landmarking say it is a necessary step for Carroll Gardens, which is already mired in a battle about overdevelopment. The city changed its zoning rules in October to limit the size of new buildings to five stories in most of the neighborhood, and preservationists say those changes alone won’t be enough to protect the character of a district that originally became popular for its brownstones. [NYDN]

A slew of discounted Brooklyn brownstones is coming on the market. A bevy of three- to four-unit residential buildings in Bedford-Stuyvesant can be had for under $300,000, for example, according to Ofer Cohen, the managing director at TerraCrg Commercial Realty Group (see full report after the jump). “I’ve got a list of 10 of them right now,” he said. But investors looking for a steal in prime neighborhoods like Carroll Gardens or Park Slope may need to wait a little longer. According to a report released today by TerraCRG, 51 percent of non-residential mortgages that began foreclosure filings in the past year in Brooklyn were for three- to four-unit residential buildings, and 80 percent were for mortgages under $1 million. Cohen added that the majority of the foreclosures took place in lower-priced neighborhoods like Bed-Stuy and East New York. “The weaker neighborhoods are seeing more of this,” said Cohen, who recently sold a non-performing mortgage note on an eight-family building in Crown Heights for $400,000, a 50 percent discount. [more]

From the May issue: Crown Heights, a multicultural Brooklyn
neighborhood with stunning architecture but a troubled history, is
showing the impact of the recession in stalled residential sales,
boarded-up homes and commercial vacancies popping up with increasing
frequency in recent months. While the area continues to beckon bargain
hunters eager for deals on brownstones, many of those would-be buyers
now struggle to get mortgages. In the first quarter of this year, the
total number of sales for houses, co-ops and condominiums in Crown
Heights dropped to 40, compared to 75 sales for the same period in
2008, according to data from Streeteasy.com. The average price for a
Crown Heights home dropped nearly 27 percent, from $493,700 in the
first quarter of last year, to $363,114 in the first quarter of 2009. [more]