CerebralDebris

I’d like to preface this update by saying it’s not a “woe is me” post but more of a random musing. New York City and its economic dynamics fascinate me because they don’t seem to behave in a way that has any relation to the rest of the country. I made the choice to live here, and I’m glad I live here, but there are frustrations inherent in living anywhere (Syracuse, for example, has cheap houses but is freezing-ass cold and possessed of an incredibly depressed economy). This post is just reflecting on one such frustration. So …

The problem with living in Brooklyn, or anywhere in New York City that’s not a combat zone, is escaping the soul-crushing spector of spending the rest of your life throwing money down the toilet on rental accommodations. It’s not that owning a home is inherently a good thing — ask all the people who got screwed by the sub-prime crisis — but it’s something that can be very valuable for a variety of reasons. For a long time, I liked renting. It was easy, it was simple, and it didn’t require me to tie myself to an area … if I needed to get out, the worst I was sacrificing was a few months in lost rent, or whatever. Owning a home, that’s a big-time commitment not only financially, but a commitment saying “I love this city/town/etc and want to stay here for a really long period of time.” That really wasn’t something that interested me until Charlotte and I moved in together.

Of course, that event occurred in New York, where we remain still, and buying in New York is a really difficult prospect. It typically either requires you to be filthy rich, or willing to compromise heavily on location (like: live in a rat-infested shit-hole, or live an hour outside of the city, or both). Charlotte and I make good livings by American standards, but are at best middle-class by New York standards, and certainly nowhere near filthy rich. This means that while we can afford to rent in a nice neighborhood, buying in that neighborhood seems to be basically an impossibility.

Take, for instance, this noteworthy building. It’s two blocks up the street from us, it has a gorgeous exterior, it has brand-new, gut-remodeled interiors, and as a plus it used to be a brothel! Good times for all, but the smallest two-bedroom they offer is set at an asking price of nine hundred thousand dollars. I mean, even if you assume it’s 10% overpriced and maybe go crazy and believe you could haggle that to 15%, you’re still talking $765,000 plus closing costs. That will buy you a damn mansion in most of the country. Here, it buys you two bedrooms in a remodeled whorehouse. A really pretty one, I’ll admit, and the location is utterly killer … perfect balance between being close to the subway and being removed from the noise of Flatbush Ave. If I had $900k to spend on a condo, I’d look real hard at this place.

But I don’t. So instead I’m confined to drooling over it from afar … and posting rambling blog entries about it!