In the endless rearranging of deck chairs on the Titanic that is affordable New York real estate, there are only so many stories you can tell. “X is the new Brooklyn!” “This neighborhood is the new that neighborhood!” “Here is an infuriating new fake neighborhood!” One of the more rare stories, “Manhattan is cheaper than Brooklyn!” hasn’t reared its head for at least a couple of years, but now the New York Times has resurrected it today in order to…well, we don’t know, make you depressed on a Friday we guess.
Last time we were all marveling at the fact that “Manhattan” was cheaper than “Brooklyn,” the focus was on how DUMBO and Williamsburg were more expensive than the Upper East Side and Harlem. Sensing that the trolling from the first story hadn’t gone far enough, the Times picked up the ball and ran with it. They looked at the median sales prices for condos and co-ops and found that Lower East Side ($582,500), Murray Hill ($794,072) and Inwood ($350,000) were cheaper than neighborhoods like Cobble Hill ($1,050,000), Downtown Brooklyn ($809,000) and Fort Greene ($775,000).
While it’s definitely upsetting to think about how the real estate machine has terraformed Brooklyn to such an unrecognizable degree to the point where it’s hopeless to afford living here, there are a couple things to keep in mind. One, this story doesn’t cover a single neighborhood south of Prospect Park, so it’s not as if all of Brooklyn is more expensive than Manhattan. Yet.
Two, this deals with homeownership, and as we’ve gone over before, you will almost definitely never own a home. Instead, we will all die renters, living in creepy dystopian sharing economy work/live spaces owned by companies that are turning the sharing economy into a cult. So as long as you keep all that in mind, there’s no sense in worrying about Manhattan being “cheaper” than Brooklyn.