New York Post, Tuesday, December 1, 2020nypost.comBy Zachary kussinWelcome to 1015 Summit Ave.,
home to four of NYC’s least-ex-
pensive abodes for sale.
According to listings portal
StreetEasy, prices in the 38-unit
building range from a $60,000 stu-
dio — which the site lists as the
city’s cheapest apartment — to a
$75,000 one-bedroom. At least six
apartments there have listed since
August, offering buyers a shock-
ingly low-priced chance to own
property in a city where people go
broke to live in a shoebox.
“The minute I saw the listing
and I saw that there was an open
house, I went,” said Jade Amaker,
45, who works in the continuing
medical education office at Co-
lumbia University and lives in
Harlem. In September, she visited
a one-bedroom unit in the build-
ing, in Highbridge, The Bronx. Just
a week later, she submitted her
$79,000 offer and is on track to
close in January.
“I definitely feel like I was on
my way of getting priced out of
the city, and it was a scary feel-
ing,” said the Bronx native. “I felt
like I needed to do something to
secure my future in the city, and
this was it.”
Just a 15-minute walk to the sub-
way at Yankee Stadium, 1015 Sum-
mit is a Housing Development
Fund Corporation (HDFC) co-op,
a source of affordable homeown-
ership. Not regulated by the city,
available apartments are adver-
tised with income restrictions
based on area median income setby individual co-op boards. At 1015
Summit, which is in a low-income
area, earnings can’t be greater
than $95,520 for one resident and
$122,880 for a family of three.
HDFC apartments are also in-
tended for long-term living, not
investment properties.
There are some 1,200 HDFC
buildings in the city, which to-
gether house about 25,800 units
below market rate. Near 1015 Sum-
mit, there’s an HDFC co-op where
a one-bedroom apartment is listed
for $130,000. Meanwhile, in Man-
hattan, a three-bedroom in an East
Harlem HDFC co-op is listed for
$850,000, and in Brooklyn, a two-
bedroom in prime Williamsburg
seeks $625,000.
1015 stands out for its prices well
below $100,000.
“This is not something that fre-
quently comes up in the market,”said appraiser Jonathan Miller, of
Miller Samuel Real Estate. “It is
not the norm.”
And thanks to those prices, pro-
spective buyers have flocked to
the building in recent months to
eye its offerings.
“[Because of] COVID, it was
like, boom,” said Kim McKeller,
the building’s Brown Harris Stev-
ens broker. “[People] want to
make changes and now’s the time.”
Plus, due to a newly formed
co-op board, changes are afoot in
the entire building, said McKeller.
“[Owners] want to protect their
investment, so they’re doing any-
thing they can” to spruce up the
space. There are plans to redo the
lobby, install a grand awning over
the entryway and to make storage
spaces and a small gym in the
basement. Earlier this year, resi-
dents added seating and plantersto an outdoor area to convert it
into a shared yard.
“The building had never used
the backyard and it blew my
mind,” said Fernando Vega, 50, a
resident and board member whose
work in event production has been
hit hard by the pandemic. Along
with his husband, Andres Vega, 39,
he renovated the outdoor space,
which included painting a mural
on the cinder-block wall.
Vega bought the apartment for
$55,000 in 2017, and hopes others
will make the decision to put
down roots in the co-op even dur-
ing uncertain times.
“It’s... something I’ve been
proud of. It’s a big accomplish-
ment, and it’s the stuff that dreams
are made of,” said Vega. “I have a
place in New York City that I want
to hold on to — and my forever
home.”Bronx co-op
units could be
cheapest in NYC
steal estate:
Four apartments
are for sale at 1015
Summit Ave. in
The Bronx for as
little as $60,000,
making it one of
the least expensive
apartment buildings
in New York City.welcome home: Jade Amaker (left) shows off her new digs; Andres Vega (right) spruces up the yard.Stefano GiovanniniStefano GiovanniniWeird
true
BUTGerman police have
launched an investigation
into the disappearance of a
large wooden sculpture of a
phallus from a mountainside
where it mysteriously ap-
peared several years ago.
The nearly 7-foot-tall
sculpture appeared to have
been chopped down over the
weekend. Only a small pile of
sawdust was left behind on
the Gruenten mountain.
Hawaii is offering free
round-trip tickets to former
residents, as well as out-of-
staters who want to work re-
motely from the islands.
The program, dubbed
“Movers and Shakas,” is seek-
ing those who are passionate
about Hawaii and who have
“the skills and willingness to
contribute to the local com-
munity,” officials said.
A shaka is a friendly Hawai-
ian gesture involving the
thumb and pinky.
An Australian diver had a
terrifying run-in with a ham-
merhead shark — but fought
it off with the GoPro he used
to record the incident.
Dion Creek said he was
diving on Magpie Reef off
Princess Charlotte Bay in
Queensland when the shark
swam toward him.
Creek repeatedly shoved
the predator with his camera
to repel it.
A collection of Ice Age
paintings — dubbed “the Sis-
tine Chapel of the ancients”
— has been discovered in the
Amazon rainforest.
The prehistoric rock art
was discovered last year by a
British-Colombian team of
archaeologists, who un-
earthed tens of thousands of
12,500-year-old paintings
while exploring in Columbia.
The discovery was kept se-
cret ahead of the BBC Channel
4 series “Jungle Mystery: Lost
Kingdoms of the Amazon,”
which premieres next month.
Two elderly exotic birds in
need of special care were sto-
len from a California zoo
over the weekend.
The hunt is on for the bird-
napper who cut a lock at the
Fresno Chaffee Zoo’s Austra-
lian Asian Aviary exhibit
Sunday and stuffed the two
threatened-species birds into
a duffel bag before fleeing.
Natalie Musumeci, Wires