Land of fun, land of reduced rent. Via NPR.

While Hurricane Sandy was, is, and continues to be a hot messy mess of devastation for this city, at the very least, it showed you where everyone stood when it came to this city. The government didn’t care. Corporations didn’t care (unless it provided them an opportunity for new building space). You cared. Some places embarrassed themselves, while others found it to be a source of inspiration. Sandy brought with it a lot of surprises about the city, and here’s one more: real estate developers are being pretty cool about keeping rent prices down. (more…)

Well…these folks do look pretty happy about it

No matter what kind of outreach efforts real estate developers make in cities, there’s always been a gulf between residents of a city and the people who build the apartments. But Fundrise, a new startup is trying to close the gulf between the everyman and developers by allowing people to crowdfund real estate projects. If we all become real estate investors, will we stop being angry at developers? (more…)

The summer is louder in Brooklyn. Between your neighbor who blasts Usher songs into the street all day, kids playing on the sidewalk, and your own drunk ass fumbling for your keys and cursing all that tequila you drank, your neighborhood is probably about to turn into a big ol’ noisefest. Here are some affordable options for your potential new digs. (more…)

Their show could be your life. Or is it the other way around? Ugh, we give up

TV: teacher, mother, secret lover. Despite the fact that we don’t own one, we still try to keep up with what’s going on in the world of the pictocube. One thing we strenuously try to avoid though, is aping the characters on TV shows. This is mostly accomplished by watching shows with sociopath protagonists, like Archer, Mad Men and Breaking Bad. We’d argue that Girls should be on that list, since even at their most sympathetic, the characters on that show are still terrible. But, a lot like how dudes still want to be Don Draper despite the fact that he’s just awful, people in their 20s want to be, or think they are, Hannah Horvath. So of course someone advertised an open room in their apartment as being a scene straight out of Girls. (more…)

This isn’t a party: all these people live here. But they only pay $500/month!

With everyone feeling good about winter’s end (even in the driving rain it was kind of warm last night), we thought it would be useful to add a pinch of doom right before everyone’s weekend. Why? Consider it a public service, a reminder that every good time is fleeting and the rest of life is a slog of one piece of bad news after another. Today’s bad news? Rents continue going up in Brooklyn, and fast, while your living space options continue to shrink. (more…)

Yo dawg, I heard you like closets, so we put a closet in your closet so you could browse while you browse

Last night was the season premiere of Mad Men, a show about rich people in various crises that is popular because we all want to be rich. But maybe we wouldn’t be if we read the Times Real Estate section regularly, since rich people have ridiculous problems. Like needing a closet so large they can fit a fish tank in it. It’s a crisis apparently, but as we all know, the Chinese have the same word for “crisis” and “opportunity”: crisitunity! And you can definitely take advantage of this particular crisitunity. (more…)

Yep, this is a thing now

Hey, remember when the news dropped about NYC’s first micro-apartments? We laughed, we cried at the idea that we couldn’t even afford those, we rolled out eyes when people brought up Japan’s capsule hotels. Well, you can get ready for that all over again, because the city loved the reaction it caused so much that they have plans for even more tiny apartments. (more…)

Honestly, it could be so much worse. Keep that from happening

As long as we’re on the subject of Brooklyn, real estate and what’s fair and not fair, wouldn’t it be nice to be involved before decisions like this get too far along for you to make an impact? After all, nothing is worse than impotently bitching and moaning about something that you might have had an opportunity to change for the better. Neighbors Allied for Good Growth feel that way too (well, they probably say it nicer than we did), and to that end, are having a community meeting tonight at The Woods (48 South 4th Street) to discuss the new plans for the Williamsburg waterfront. And you won’t be spitting the wind here: the developers will be there too. (more…)

“$4000/month to live next to the Piking Food Products warehouse? Where do I sign up???”

Given the ever-upward, certainly-not-a-bubble trajectory of Brooklyn real estate, it’s appropriate to ask: is a huge increase in rental prices ever really that surprising or abnormal? It’s a cause for concern, because not everyone is an i-banker or has their own fabulously successful app keeping them rolling in dough. But given that everyone wants to live in Brooklyn, especially around artists, we have a hard time believing a 20 percent rise in Bushwick rental prices should be greeted with words like “abnormal” or “incredible.” (more…)

Crown Heights partisans strike a blow. via I Love Franklin Ave

There’s nothing better than watching neighborhoods scrap over a block here or a block there. Now that people are pouring into Brooklyn like so much ketchup on a highway, you’ve got fights breaking out over what street belongs to what neighborhood. We’ve already had East Williamsburg firing shots delivering a petition to try to break away from Williamsburg, the horror of East Bushwick, and now a little further south, we’ve got the signs of conflict brewing between Crown Heights and Prospect Heights. (more…)