Slim deal on a NY townhouse? Flat chance!

By: DIANA GOLOBAY
September 22, 2009 4:00 PM CST

IKEA is braving a new frontier in best practices, offering free furniture and “design expertise” to the buyers of New York City’s skinniest house.

The residence at 75 1/2 Bedford in Greenwich Village, squished between 75 and 77 Bedford St., presents a definite design challenge for the eventual buyers. With an interior only 8.5 feet wide (the exterior measures a deceptive 9.5 feet) and 42 feet long, the house bears a history of maximized space use — dating back to its establishment in 1873 — including a custom stove with a single row of four burners, built to fit, compared with the usual two rows of two.

The townhouse with its 990 square feet and three floors (plus a basement) was originally listed at $2.75m in late August, according to an article at NYDailyNews.com.

Despite the hugemongous sticker price (the house went for $270,000 in 1994, according to records), the future owners of the house will receive $10,000 of new IKEA furnishings at the cost of a big, fat zero.

“We know that space is at a premium in most homes and especially in this particular home,” said IKEA spokesperson Janice Simonsen in a statement. “We’re so in love with small spaces that we’re putting an offer on the table, albeit a skinny table — free furniture and design expertise to the eventual buyers.”

The constricted space not only presents a challenge to future owners as furnishings are chosen, but also as furnishings are assembled. IKEA furniture may be easy on the wallet, but the savings come at a cost of time spent in at-home assembly.

The home’s new buyers may have to assemble $10,000 worth of free IKEA furniture to fill the skinniest house in New York City, but at least they won’t have to assemble the house itself, unlike Top Gear’s James May, who built (with, like, the help of 1,000 volunteers) a full-sized Lego house on an English wine estate using 3.3m of the plastic building bricks only to have it demolished recently when the estate needed the land back and no buyer was found to purchase, and remove, the Lego structure.