179 Monroe St: the reckoning of the asshole

This is what the listing said:
Luxury new home with a private backyard, greenhouse, more than 1500 sq ft. and 25 year tax abatement. With 1500 sq ft. your options are endless! Two-bedroom/three-bedroom live/work space -- you decide.

From the photographs we knew right off the bat that we were looking at a high asshole-rating unit. But we couldn't NOT look at the place during the open house a couple Sundays ago, as it fit what we are looking for. 2 bedroom condo for $525K, maintenance of $495. We biked over through Bed-Stuy. It was not a bad neighborhood, a lot of new developments as I mentioned in earlier posts. When we arrived at 179 Monroe, though.... We almost turned right back around and went to our next listing. Irwin looked like he might throw up.


But. This was all part of our real estate experiment/education so we went on in to see what they offered. We started with the 2 bedroom unit in the back of the first floor. Upon entering there was a brand-new open kitchen looking out over a backyard. Very modern.






The fenced in area in the middle of the backyard looked down into the "greenhouse" which was part of the unit. We went downstairs to look at that space from inside.

I have no idea, still, what exactly one is supposed to do with this greenhouse area... Grow marijuana???

Once downstairs we were led into a very large concrete room, with the only window looking into the greenhouse. No heating source. What great storage/recreation space, we thought.

And then, our tour of the apartment came to an abrupt end. Where were the advertised two bedrooms?! Apparently, what we saw as the basement rec room was it! Now I don't really understand how they can advertise a 2 bedroom when there aren't any bedrooms at all. We were shown a few other units in the building, which consisted of two rooms that kind of looked like this:

And one of these rooms would have a kitchen in them. And these too were advertised as 2 bedrooms. Ok so I guess the deal was, these super-modren units were on sale for cheap so that the buyer could custom contract the place to CREATE a loft/bedroom in them him/herself. Interesting idea... sort of. Or maybe the developer was too lazy or ran out of money to finish off the job??

In case you were wondering, this was in the bathroom.


And you know what that means. (assh*le)