Park Slope is expensive

I'd be interested to hear what streets you found these cheap places at and what rents did you find?

Yeah and it all depends on the location and the description vs. reality. The 2nd bedroom in our place is really just an office. You might be able to put a twin bed in there with no room left over to walk around it!
Also places actually on 4th ave (sorta the PS area) are not a pretty sight, and let's not even get on to the subject of street noise/smog/filth/bums... etc.. on that street and edges of other streets in PS, though that's changing as the years go by.

Santa, did you actually see the areas these cheap rents were at? Not that I'm looking to move or anything :-'

cheaper than carroll gardens, cobble hill, ect yes. well, parts. there's actually some pretty decently priced places in carroll gardens (and are actually in carroll gardens, not red hook being passed off as cg). but the prices are rising significantly. i'm on 4th Ave (its not as bad as mamacita is makin' sound hehe) between 21st and 22nd in the ever expanding "South Slope" and the price of an apartment the size of mine has gone up so much since we got this place. and depending on how nice our landlord chooses to be when it comes time to renew the lease, we may end up getting priced out.

Not to be a prude but when I was busy responding to this most serious post I noticed that naked lady pic displayed upper left hand corner.. don't bother looking up.. it is prob gone and replaced with a darling pic of a cute baby!!...

So that click led me to the rest of the photos in the album... geez.. it was straight naked ladies in let us say pleasurable poses.. pleasure for the men to see and pleasure for the ladies to do!!!1 I was just suprised..



Don't even reply.. My prude moment is over!

rtraindweller, I'm not saying 4th ave is awful, I live off it and I like it a lot. As you said, rent is a bit cheaper on 4th, I think it's because it's not 8th ave or 6th ave... etc.. but even now rents levels are changing and catching up..

veets wrote: I am thinking back to 1980 when ... Ft Greene and Bed Sty were no man's land for a white female with children. What was a Damsel to do? At that time PS was more reasonable to rent and to buy...

Hey!! I lived in Ft Greene in 1980, with my white parents.

OK, OK, it was a bit of a no man's land, but hey, we did it. And we weren't the only ones. Oh, and it was a kickass investment as well, I might add.

Garfunky wrote: choosing rents from 2001 - 2003 as a comparison is completely off base.
the real estate market crashes along with the economy as a result of 9/11
and it took a few yrs for the overall housing market to return to pre 9/11 rents.

during this lull landlords were giving away apts no broker fee 2 months free rent.

a very poor comparison.

Good point. Here's much more current information - straight from a brokers research. BTW - love the admonition at the end!

TopNYCApts.com believes now is the time to get in on Brooklyn Real Estate. A report on 2007 apartment rentals from Brown Harris Stevens Brokers said that apartment prices in high demand neighborhoods, such as Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope, remain static at around $578 a square foot. This has not moved up much from the borough's 2006 rates.

If any of our readers out there have been contemplating buying and selling Brooklyn properties, it looks like getting in before '08 may be your best shot. Once the revitalization of this area is complete, you could be renting out for much more than your buying price.

Did you know that most landlords require a prospective tenant to show income that is at least 40 times his/her annual salary? It's true - from a May 2007 NY Times article...

"The rents for one-bedroom apartments in Manhattan average $2,567 a month, and two-bedrooms average $3,854 a month, according to data from Citi Habitats, a large rental brokerage company, but rents tend to be far higher in coveted neighborhoods like the Upper West Side and TriBeCa."

"Because landlords typically require renters to earn 40 times their monthly rent in annual income, renters of those average apartments would need to earn at least $102,680, individually or combined, to qualify for a one-bedroom and $154,160 to afford a two-bedroom."

I would imagine that PS rents are comparable.

Subject: Park Slope is getting there ...

Well, 35 years ago, a brownstone went for 30-40k in/on the slope east of 5th Street, so in one way, it will probably never be the same nor properly described as "the more things change, the more things remain the same"

It would also be fair to say that the hey-day of Park Slope as a true and unique Brooklyn neighborhood was 1960-1990. All days after these days were the great transformation of the city as a whole. Its not the change was bad, but things are much more complicated. The increase in density, traffic, people, and the interest from non-New Yorkers to live in the city and Brooklyn is incredible. People really love being in the city. Remember, in 1970, only a certain type of person moved to Brooklyn's Park SLope neighborhood. The 'adventure' ak.a (the path less taken) had many risks ....

Park SLope is getting expensive, but it is still affordable in terms of stores and living supplies. The problem is that the support of small businesses in Park SLope is essential to maintaining the affordability and the quality of life. Big box stores, contrary to some popular belief, do not reduce prices ... I submit they only increase consumption. If I might be blunt, they really suck.

In terms of the price of a home or a condo, forgetaboutit. The hey-day for those days are gone.

Charlesbklyn

Subject: Clarification

Your right ... A "hey-day" is usually dependent on the person, the date and the circumstance, and thus a subjective assessment.

However.. this is an objective matter. Objectively, the hey-day for modern Park Slope was 1960-1990. Maybe you are mad you don't understand this ... but there a jazz saying pertinent to your dilemma:

"If you have to ask, you'll never know."

Five major events in PS 1960-1990:
1) Diverse neighborhood unique in the city.
2) Honesty, a flushing of the neighborhood of racist people as "white flight" went into full effect.
2) People moving to the neighborhood during this time were extremely forward thinking, modern and tolerant.
4) The choice to come to Park Slope was not based on whether you could afford it ..
5) Sesame Street was based off of neighborhoods in NYC like Park Slope.




Relax on the self-evident ... few things rarely are.

Charlesbklyn

escap - all the Algonquin correspondence from 1587 are stored in the original ENIAC - Gates never even considered an interface, so we can't access the archives.

Livetotravel wrote: charles - here are the people who evidently rocked your world in the second #2 above...
http://onlytheblogknowsbrooklyn.typepad.com/the_park_slope_100/

Just an FYI, Paul Auster once described PS as "one of the most democratic and tolerant places on earth."

yeah, now its just filthy with entitled democrats protecting themselves from other democrats

*** apartment prices in high demand neighborhoods, such as Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope, remain static at around $578 a square foot. This has not moved up much from the borough's 2006 rates. ***

considering the nationwide housing slump and wall st repercussions ,
it stands to reason that pricing in NYC ought to ease.

should pricing on homes for sale come down more people will buy,
less will rent, suppy of rentals will increase,demand will decrease and poof rents dont jump 500 bucks for a renewal as has been happening in manhattan for the last year...

Mamacita wrote: rtraindweller, I'm not saying 4th ave is awful, I live off it and I like it a lot. As you said, rent is a bit cheaper on 4th, I think it's because it's not 8th ave or 6th ave... etc.. but even now rents levels are changing and catching up..

i totally agree. i think the fact that you only have to walk a few blocks to the subway stations is a big thing for alot of people who move to the area. and the rents are catching up at a tremendous rate. on my stretch of 4th, apartments the same size as mine are now going for almost $600 a month more than what we pay here now. I'm kinda scared to see what might happen when it comes time to renew the lease. I know it won't go up THAT much, but still we can't afford to go terribly higher than what we're at now.

Livetotravel wrote: Did you know that most landlords require a prospective tenant to show income that is at least 40 times his/her annual salary? It's true - from a May 2007 NY Times article...

Wait, what? Do you mean 40 times the annual (or monthly?) rent? Otherwise, this sentence is super-confusing...

doctorj wrote: 40 times monthly rent as minimum annual income sounds like a sensible figure to me as a limit, for the sake of both the tenant and the landlord; it's the same as 30% of income on housing, which is often named as the threshold for housing stress.

Oh come on. We all know that many many people in this city pay much more than 30% of income on rent or mortgage payments.

And what's to become of all those workers earning in the 20Ks or 30Ks? If every neighborhood conformed to the 40 times monthly rent for yearly income minimum, many mature, responsible lower-income adults would be forced to live in miserable conditions. If someone chooses to spend a higher percentage of their income on housing, perhaps it's a conscious choice to forgo other things in favor of a better living situation. As long as they have a good credit history, they should not be penalized.

Frankly, this attitude sounds to me like the view of an entitled member of the elite who has little understanding or concern for the way that people who are outside their privileged world live.