Housing construction in Borough Park, whatever the season

Eye On Real Estate

February 24, 2016 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Construction is underway at 1311 44th St. in Borough Park. Eagle photos by Lore Croghan

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In Borough Park, families are large as a matter of religious belief. There’s constant demand for additional housing. As in every Brooklyn neighborhood, construction work is done even when it’s cold.

* One of the myriad projects underway in the Orthodox Jewish enclave is at 1311 44th St., where workers were hoisting steel beams into place when we visited the neighborhood the other day. See related story.

The owner of the existing two-family, two-story house on the site plans to more than double the size of the building to 5,633 square feet and convert it to a four-family, five-story residence, city Buildings Department filings show.

Malky Eckstein bought the property for $220,000 in 2009, then transferred ownership to 1311 Realty LLC the following year, city Finance Department records indicate. Members of the LLC include Shimon Jacobowitz, Joseph Rosenberg and Aron Mandel, the records show.

* A two-family home on a beautiful block of limestone rowhouses, 4814 11th Ave., is being enlarged horizontally and vertically, including the addition of a fourth floor, Buildings Department filings show.

The house belongs to Samson Szegedin, who purchased it for $898,000 in 2014, Finance Department records indicate.

* An example of new-ish construction that’s suited to large families is the three-story brick building at 4620 12th Ave., which has 14,094 square feet of residential space plus one enclosed parking space, Buildings Department records indicate.

That building is divided into two residential condo units.

One condo has seven bedrooms; the other condo has an enormous “garden room” and a big terrace on its third floor, Finance Department records indicate.

Joseph Wosner is the manager of the LLC that purchased the site for $3.1 million in 2008. A three-story frame house that stood on the property at that time was later demolished.

* We were surprised to see the home at 1314 40th St. standing empty with boarded-up windows in the middle of a beautiful row of brick houses.

A 1999 complaint noted in Buildings Department records alleges this two-family home was “converted to house 10 families.” Agency inspectors were unable to get inside 1314 40th St. that year — or to gain access in 2003 and 2004, after a further complaint was made alleging “illegal conversion of the entire premises.”

The house was vacant in 2012, another complaint made to the Buildings Department indicates.

According to Finance Department records, Yoel Oberlander has owned the house since 2005. Before that, it had belonged to David Oberlander for nearly two decades.