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A four-story residential and commercial building collapsed in a cloud of debris on Sunday in Brooklyn, temporarily trapping a young girl in an adjacent structure but causing no serious injuries, city officials said.

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Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

A girl next door was temporarily trapped, but no one was badly hurt.

The building, at 493 Myrtle Avenue in Clinton Hill, fell shortly before 2 p.m., leaving a pile of rubble and a wall of scaffolding from work that was being done to repair cracks in the building’s exterior wall, according to city officials and the building’s owner, William Sang.

A bar and lounge called the Vesper on the first floor was closed at the time, and while there were people in the building moments before the collapse, all of the residents of the upstairs apartments were accounted for, officials said. A man in his mid-30s was treated at Brooklyn Hospital Center for bruises on his arm, and three other people refused medical attention, the Fire Department said. The young girl who was temporarily trapped was unharmed, officials said.

Emergency crews continued to search through the debris in the afternoon, while inspectors with the city’s Buildings Department were examining the integrity of buildings on both sides of the fallen structure. The Buildings Department issued vacate orders for six buildings on the block, said Tony Sclafani, a spokesman for the department.

City Councilwoman Letitia James, who represents the district, said a four-story building at 491 Myrtle Avenue, which was attached to the fallen building and suffered significant damage, would have to be demolished.

It is “definitely going to have to be taken down,” Ms. James said.

Fire crews were already on their way to 493 Myrtle Avenue after receiving reports of falling bricks, she said. They arrived seconds before the collapse.

“If any of the men had gone in, it would have been a Father’s Day disaster,” Ms. James said.

About 14 people lived in the two buildings, Mr. Sang and residents said.

The fallen building had several active violations, including one issued May 1 after complaints from tenants of shaking and vibrations, and another for working without a proper permit. An inspector noted at the time vertical cracks running from the ground floor to the roof level. The inspection also found cracks in the interior on the third and fourth floors, according to Buildings Department records.

A hearing on the violation had been scheduled for Monday, but Mr. Sang, the building’s owner, said it had been postponed until later in the summer to give him time to fix the problems.

Mr. Sang, who said he bought the building in 2006, said that the crack had been there for 10 years and that when the Buildings Department inspected it a month ago, “they said there was a crack but that it was O.K. to have tenants.”

Jose Diaz, who lived there for eight years before moving to 491 Myrtle, said, “The whole thing always shook. It always had many cracks in the wall.”

Mr. Diaz’s wife, Carolyn Diaz, said that even in the building next door they could feel the shaking. “I’m just glad it happened when we could get out.”

Anh Nguyen, 28, who lived in the building that collapsed, said that workers had been “mending the crack in the wall for several weeks.” Mr. Nguyen, a Web developer, briefly left his apartment and returned to find the building destroyed. “I’m still in shock,” he said. “It’s not going to hit me that I’ve lost everything right away.”

Next door, at 491 Myrtle, Sheila Nunez and her family were in their fourth-floor apartment when her bedroom wall sheared off. “I told the kids to run,” she said. Her husband, Jose Nunez, said, “You couldn’t see anything. Everything was full of smoke.”

The Nunezes’ daughter, Caitlyn, 10, who had been in the shower, lingered in the ground-floor hall to dress as the rest of the family escaped to the street. Seconds later, tumbling debris blocked the door to 491 with Caitlyn still inside. “My daughter was stuck in the hallway,” Ms. Nunez said. But firefighters shifted the debris, which included an awning for a fish market so that Caitlyn could escape.

By Creighton A. Welch – Express-News

If you’re in the market for buying a house, buying a distressed property might be an avenue to look into.

But when buying a distressed home, make sure you know what’s involved, how the process works and the challenges you may face. Otherwise, you might become more distressed than the actual house.

“The perception of getting a great deal is definitely there, and in many cases you do get a great deal,” said Mike Ochoa, a real estate agent with Keller Williams Realty who focuses on short sales. “But you have to be patient. There are a lot of pitfalls that can be there.”

Distressed properties typically either are in foreclosure or are being offered through a short sale. In a short sale, the bank or mortgage lender will agree to discount the balance left on the loan, which helps the homeowner avoid foreclosure.

Often, buyers can find great deals on distressed properties, which is what makes them attractive.

Ricky and Sarah Alaniz recently purchased a foreclosed condo unit at the Camp Street Lofts.

Because it was foreclosed several years ago, the bank was ready to sell it at a discount, and “we were able to purchase it at it a good price,” Ricky Alaniz said.

He said it was cheaper by about $30 per square foot than a similar condo in the complex that was not in foreclosure, which ended up saving the couple about $30,000.

“It turned out to be a very positive experience,” he said. “It took a couple weeks longer, simply because there were some issues that were not resolved” ahead of time.

Ochoa says a short sale could take 90 days because of all the parties involved, and buying a foreclosure could take a similar amount of time.

Because a bank or lender often controls these properties, they act as another player in the process, which can add to the time it takes to buy a property.

Buying a distressed property “can sometimes be rather lengthy because there are multiple interests involved,” said Lisa Schmidt, a real estate agent with the Phyllis Browning Co. “Depending on the depths of the bank’s involvement, it tends to make the process a lot longer because you have more people who have to approve or check off on things.”

But banks with foreclosed property can sometimes represent the buyer.

“The bank that owns the property or is handling the property may be interested in providing the financing to the new buyer and so that can be a plus,” Schmidt said. “You’d want to compare what they’re offering with other lenders, but that can be a potential plus.”

The Alanizes financed their condo with the bank that had foreclosed on it. Still, working with a bank on a foreclosure made a difference compared with buying a conventional home.

“The difference in my perspective was mostly the financing end of it, where lenders were a bit more leery of financing an empty space,” Ricky Alaniz said.

Banks often will review their offers for foreclosed properties to make sure the offer covers all the debt owed against the property, because the mortgage might be just part of what’s owed. If there are condo or HOA fees, taxes or a home equity loan, that debt will be included in the purchase price a bank will accept.

Ochoa, who has been specializing in short sales since 1994, says buyers often can find better deals through short sales than through foreclosures.

When a lending institution takes the time to prepare a home for the market, whether that means paying any owed taxes or fees or repairing any damage, the bank may net as little as 40 percent of the original appraisal, he said.

“A bank foreclosure can cost the bank a lot of money,” he said. “On a short sale, we have a little bit more room. The lenders are going to tell us what kind of room we have to price it.”

When buying a distressed property, one risk is that the house is physically distressed as well. The Alanizes bought an empty shell because they wanted to design and build the interior themselves. But even with that shell, there still were plumbing issues that never had been taken care of and that delayed closing by several weeks.

“Maybe those owners weren’t able to keep up with the maintenance,” Schmidt said. “Certainly not all are in bad shape. Many are nice homes that were well taken care of.”

In some cases, prospective buyers might not have the opportunity to inspect the home before closing, Schmidt said.

“The banks are often in the mind-set of selling it in an as-is condition,” she said.

Another caution with buying a distressed property is that it could carry that price stigma throughout your ownership.

“I look at track records,” Ochoa said. “The majority of times, if you bought that foreclosure and you got that discount on it, you’re going to have to go around and sell for that discount.”