The only difference between pornography and The New York Times’ real estate coverage is that after you click on a totally unrealistic performance of carnality, there is usually a climax. “In New York City real estate, the quest for the next hot neighborhood never ends,” today’s Times erotica begins, reminding us that if only we had more money we’d be living happier lives in the right neighborhoods. If real estate were pornography, “New York’s Next Hot Neighborhoods” would be a golden shower gang bang in a brownstone panic room.
The tone of the piece is playful, worldly, wise. It ignores (therefore enthralls) the majority of New Yorkers who can’t afford to buy property, for whom an affordable place to live is a dire necessity, not some token of Success.
“Bushwick, Brooklyn, is over. Ridgewood, Queens, had its hipster moment. Townhouses have been selling for more than $1 million in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, for some time,” we’re told. Why are real estate prices so inflated? Is this a good thing? Is there anything that can be done about it?
Nope, too late, you missed your chance! How can you possibly change what already exists? It’s time to find other communities to chuck down the moist, peristaltic dream grinder that is the New York Real Estate Industry. Gosh, living in New York City sure is expensive—better snatch up your piece while you still can!
But where can I, Joe Six Pack Of Dogfish Head, find such a place? Will my cockapoo Ralphie feel safe doing number 2?
"Just because gentrification is happening doesn’t mean crime drops precipitously,” said Jonathan J. Miller, the president of the appraisal firm Miller Samuel. “It’s a process.” But buyers who seek the next “it” neighborhood, rough edges and all, would do well to take their cues from developers.
Sure, you could “follow the artists” and hope you land in the next SoHo. But a better bet than a strong whiff of turpentine, developers say, may be a neighborhood with access to public transportation and real estate values that are rising but still lower than in surrounding areas. Attractive existing architecture is also a plus. Eminent rezoning is an inviting prospect. A new supermarket is another.
Yes, “take your cues” from real estate developers, who definitely care about your interests and the neighborhoods they’re building in as much as they care about the money they make.
Developers watch for signs of activity in an “understored” area. “If you’re trying to find a deal, it’s not going to be the most robust prime retail corridor,” said David Kramer, a principal of the Hudson Companies, which invested early in places like Manhattan’s meatpacking district and Dumbo in Brooklyn. “You want to look for what we refer to as green shoots,” he said.
“Connecticut Muffin was a good indicator,” he said, referring to the suburban bakery, which opened its first Brooklyn branch in Park Slope more than two decades ago, and has been a harbinger of gentrification over the last several years in places like Windsor Terrace, Clinton Hill and Ditmas Park. Its newest outlet opened in Crown Heights about three years ago.
Most people would categorize a chain that sells muffins as a “grey shoot” or at best, a “beige shoot.” But these developers are eternal optimists—they’re even willing to take chances on places no one has ever heard of except for the tens of thousands of people who live there already.
“If it’s a neighborhood that you’ve barely heard of, that’s a good sign,” Mr. Kramer half-joked, noting the Hudson Companies is in contract on a development site in Bergen Beach, Brooklyn, a waterfront community near Mill Basin. Among the draws, he said: Fairway Market has leased its second Brooklyn location there.
We later learn that “you could buy a two family house for $700,000” in (West) Sunset Park; that a woman and her family are “living like kings” for $480,000 in the Rockaways; that there are “some 50 listings” under $1 million in Flatbush; that $500,000 is “a good deal” in East Harlem.
Keep jamming a scabrous hand down there—you’re bound to feel something.
