Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photos: New York City Moves Team LLC
Listen, it’s not as though getting an apartment in New York has ever been easy. But one could probably argue it has never been harder than it is right now. The most god-awful studios are regularly renting for thousands and thousands of dollars with lines of interested tenants out the door. Here, we’ll find the actually worth-looking-ats, the actually worth-the-costs, and the surprisingly affordable-for-those-parquet-floors from around the internet.
The city gave me architecture this week, and for that I am grateful. Grand Victorians, generous prewars, scalloped trims, curved passageways, impossibly high ceilings, and hardwood floors for days. Unfortunately, it also gave me a handful of renovations that were less than discerning. Anyway, I covered Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn Heights, Astoria, and Ridgewood. Good luck.
$16,000, 5-bedroom: The price is absurd but honestly, you can get away with murder with floors like those. It’s all three floors with a backyard, if that sweetens the price tag?
Photo: New York City Moves Team LLC
$4,495, 2-bedroom: Top floor/notch light up here. Good hardwoods, too. You absolutely hate to see a hiding barn door, though …
$3,700, 2-bedroom: Third floor of a four-story building with strong floors (apparently this week’s theme) and backyard access. It’s essentially one long hallway — but then again, so is life.
Photo: Ahmed Alomari, LREB
$3,000, 1-bedroom: Very divided apartment with a lovely curved passageway leading into the living room. Every room exists entirely on its own. Feeling a little existential this week, I guess!!
$4,500, 3-bedroom: Hard to wrap my head around this unique layout, but I like half of what I’m seeing very much: the kitchen with the large format black-and-white tiles, the living room with the nice natural light. They start to lose me at the basement cave dwellings.
Photo: TorsX Inc
$2,550, 1-bedroom: Beautiful prewar with great bones that just needs a little touching up. One of the views is interior facing, as a heads-up.
$3,750, 3-bedroom: I’d be curious to see this in person and figure out how they’re getting away with calling this brownstone floor-through a three-bedroom. Love the ultrawhite paint job and the preserved details.
Photo: Compass
$3,500, 3-bedroom: Truly strange and hard-to-characterize apartment with the highest ceilings I’ve seen this week. The central room, with its exposed beams, feels grand and fabulous, but the rest of the apartment has the energy of a converted basement. Washer/dryer, outdoor space, and central air, though …
$8,200, 3-bedroom: A Victorian showplace — but similar to the last listing, it’s marred by a subpar reno. They definitely did a better job preserving the original details here, though, and the roof has a pergola, so … what are you waiting for?
$3,200, 2-bedroom: Totally decent floor-through brownstone apartment with nice parquets that were given just a touch too much varnish.
$7,999, 3-bedroom: Just another totally insane Victorian triplex mansion with some odd (and when I say odd, I mean cheap) modern finishes. The sauna is neither odd nor cheap, though.
Photo: EXR
$5,500, 2-bedroom: Duplex for the less than tall among us.
$2,925, studio: Charming! And falling apart. But run if you like powder-blue lacquer tiles in your bathroom, hardwood floors, and a mantle. Walk if you like to have space to do anything that’s not sleeping or standing in one spot.
Photo: Prince Real Estate Associates LLC
$2,750, studio: It’s about the size of a Japanese business hotel room, but it’s basically right on the Promenade, so I had to include it.
$3,000, 2-bedroom: Big prewar alert! Could use a new door … this one’s looking pretty light on security.
$3,300, 2-bedroom: Another big, beautiful prewar!
Photo: Courtesy of the owner
$3,200, 2-bedroom: Shockingly charming prewar apartment (I say shockingly because Ridgewood has not, in my experience, been a hotbed of charm in the available-apartment department). Name me something cuter than that little interior kitchen window with its scalloped wood trim. I’ll wait.
Photo: Brooklyn Real Estate Services
