I'm obsessed with real estate right now. I've been living in apartments for a very long time, moving from place to place, and always imagining what I WOULD do with the apartment if it were mine. Take out a wall here, paint the room a bright not-even-close-to antique white color, put some new flooring in, etc. All things I can't actually do as a renter. Right now I'm dying to put down a white laminated wood floor and take out a door in our current apartment. Not going to do it, but I'm sure I'll obsess over it the whole time we live here.
In the last apartment - the UES apartment - we had to do about $750 in improvements just to tolerate it. It was a horrible place. The floors were 2 inches lower towards the middle of the building, so everything ran down hill. The kitchen floor had vinyl flooring held down with DUCT TAPE, over a lumpy, uneven tile removal. We scrubbed the crap out of it and put rugs over it so we never had to look at it again. The bathroom floor tile was so disgusting, I covered it with press 'em tiles so I'd also never have to look at it again. We scrubbed until our skin cracked and bled, and what still wouldn't come clean, we painted over, including the pepto-abysmal pink bedroom and kitchen - ??? We used paint as a cleaning agent, caulking agent and repairing agent. The kitchen cabinets and countertop were starting to sink toward the middle and due to numerous leaks in the 100 year old pipes, they were starting to rot a little, too. It was a total rathole (somewhat too literally - the week before we moved out I found two rodents fighting over the garbage in the kitchen - eww!). It was the only apartment that I imagined torching for the insurance money if I owned it, and our rent was $600 more than the American median mortgage payment. Gack!
Our Astoria apartment is pure Grandma retro. Wood panelling, for reals. But it's really clean, has pretty good light and everything works. It's rodent free and the rent is cheap. It may not look as good superficially as the last one did after our ghetto rehab, but it's a million times more solid underneath. But it's not ours and never will be. We're priced out of Astoria already, which stinks. So, I keep web searching for what we can afford. It's amazing how many neighborhoods in NY we can't. The entire island of Manhattan, for instance. Conversely, we can afford half the apartments in the Bronx, none of which we want. There are only about 4 nabes left in Brooklyn in our price range: Sunset Park, Sheepshead Bay, Brighton Beach and Bay Ridge. Great water views, but WAY out there. We'll probably stay here in Queens because there are a lot of neighborhoods we can afford here, and many of them are actually less than a day's long commute to the city. I exaggerate, but seriously. Bay Ridge?!? You need a passport to get there, don't you?
The NY Times has a great real estate section online - you can look at all the pictures. Ryan made me stop looking at it and come to bed around 2am on Friday night. Like I said I'm obsessed. I can tell you exactly what $240,000 will buy you in Jackson Heights, Sunnyside, Woodside, Flushing, Corona, Bayside, Forest Hills, and all of the above mentioned Brooklyn nabes. Some of them, not much. Others a lot. I'm ready for a piece of the American dream. Even if it comes in a 550 sq. ft. package. At least it'll be mine. And I'll be able to paint it whatever color I want. Besides, who wouldn't want to live in a place called Sunnyside??
