As someone who has watched the Bay Ridge real estate market finally start sliding back to being only marginally astronomically over-priced, I nearly choked when I saw the Gingerbread House at 8220 Narrows Avenue go on sale for $12 million.  I can just hear my broker saying “See, I told you the recession is over and home prices are on the rise.”  Yeah right. But for just for fun, I pulled out my trusty mortgage calculator and found out I could own this place if I could just afford the $51,535 per month mortgage payment.

8220 Narrows Avenue. Otherwise known as the "Gingerbread House"

While I agree that Bay Ridge is a nice place to live, if I had $12 million to spend I think I *might* live somewhere else.  An article in the New York Post reports that a $12 million sale would set a Brooklyn record for a single-family home. It also would bring an astronomical return for owner Jerry Fishman. According to city records, Fishman bought the house in 1985 with a $440,000 mortgage. Assuming a typical 20% down payment, the sale price was $550,000. A $12 million sale would yield a profit of $11,450,000. The Post also reports that Fishman is an alumnus of Fort Hamilton High School (which is right across the street from the house) and that he used to gaze at the Gingerbread House as a student and dream of owning it.

I, for one, find the place rather creepy. It doesn’t exactly look welcoming to Trick-or-Treaters unless you want to end up baked into a pie! It doesn’t help that Fishman keeps several large, menacing dogs on the property, that come bounding out to the low walls surrounding the property to bark and bare teeth at anyone who deigns to walk on that side of the street. Not exactly neighborly…