Turnkey Clinton Hill Flip Sells for $3.5 Million to Pillsbury Heir

Photographer/Pillsbury Heir Snaps Up Turnkey Clinton Hill Flip for $3.5 Million

February 9, 2015

We’ve been a bit obsessed with the house at 102 Gates Avenue–a Brownstoner House of the Day not once but twice–since it hit the market as an estate sale back in 2013; lines stretched down the block and 350 people showed up on one Sunday to view the house, which was asking $1,295,000, a great price at a time when townhouse prices in the area were hitting their recent hot streak. The house, in estate condition but dripping with gorgeous original details, set off a bidding war and sold in a matter of weeks for $1,555,000, becoming a poster child of sorts for the frenzied brownstone Brooklyn townhouse market.

After a high-end renovation that spared no detail, the house, a two-unit stunner with a sweet garden apartment and a beautifully restored triplex plus landscaped yard and deck, re-emerged less than one year later at the head-turning asking price of $3.35 million.

Though on an absolutely lovely prime block of Clinton Hill, near subways, shopping and the area’s best restaurants, that price was a rare ask for the neighborhood. With listing brokers from Brown Harris Stevens comparing it to “a Faberge Egg,” the turnkey home attracted another round of attention and was snatched up within a couple of months.

Original detail pre-renovation. Photo courtesy of BK to the Fullest.

Pre-renovation: Skylight.

As it turns out, city records show the home was indeed a “killer flip,” not only getting more than its ask but blowing right by it with a selling price of $3.5 million–not a record for the neighborhood but still within the top ten, and a 125 percent increase from the previous sale a year prior. The buyer is listed as Matthew Pillsbury, the renowned photographer whose recent photographs appear in a photo essay in the New York Times Magazine and include images from Tokyo Disneyland, Robot Restaurant and the CupNoodles Museum in Yokohama. In April 2014, Pillsbury was one of 11 photographers awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Pillsbury’s series, “City Stages” was on display recently at the Aperture Foundation Gallery in NYC.

Pillsbury is also the great-great grandson of the founder of the Pillsbury flour company. And yes, dough-boy jokes are entirely rude, $3.5 million townhouse or not.