Can you imagine a 2-BR Brooklyn co-op for $19,000?

The city has just announced the lottery to be placed on waiting lists for one-and two-bedroom Mitchell-Lama co-ops in the FortGreene/Clinton Hill part of Brooklyn.

One-bedroom units run $13,599-$16,757 and two-bedroom apartments, $18,985.  Monthly carrying charges are no more than $620 for the small units and $722 for the bigger ones.

As is the practice of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, however, there is no clue either in the ad or on the department’s Web site just which buildings will be available.  And unfortunately, I do not know the neighborhood well enough to guess.

If you qualify for Mitchell-Lama income limits and

You can run, but you’ll never catch up

The lead article in today’s New York Times brings us some startling news: Some desperate buyers are having trouble selling their homes.

One case in point, Adam Rogers and his wife Gillian, whose place in Brooklyn remains on the market. They bought the Clinton Hill unit in January of 2006 for $599,000. Reports the newspaper:

“At first the the Rogerses asked $679,000, the price at which their neighbor had sold his apartment.

“They since cut the price several times and switched agents. . . The apartment is listed at $599,000; they will lose about $60,000 in transaction costs if it sells at that price.”

Next case: Elizabeth Demaray and her husband Hugo Bastidas, who paid $620,000 for their condo in East Harlem in February of 2007. This very spring, they put the apartment on the market for $715,000 “about what comparable units in the building. . . had sold for.”

Then there are Jon Vernon-Browne and Adriana Herrera, who purchased a condo in

Jon Vernon-Browne and Adriana Herrera, parents-to-be, bought a house; their condo must go, the Times says.

Manhattan’s Financial District for $1 million in February 2007. They listed it in May for $1.1 million and rejected a low-ball offer.

Another unhappy seller that the Times interviewed is Danielle Dugan, who bought her fifth-floor walk-up in2006 and has been trying to sell the Brooklyn Heights co-op for $357,000 since then. Having received one offer, which was unacceptable, she dropped the price of the apartment to $340,000.

Well, duh!