It’s a buyers market right now in these streets. If you’re looking for a home across the nation, chances are that you’re able to do some negotiating.
Unless you’re happy ass lives in New York City–specifically Manhattan.
As per CNN.com: Manhattan Home Prices: Still Crazy
Of course, it makes perfect sense to anybody who spends a few moments thinking about it. Manhattan is an island.
Class…what’s an island?
Isaac: Island is what happens before I get off the plane!
Oy vey. My guitar gently weeps for education in this country.
An island is a body of land surrounded by water. And do you know what that means? It means that there is no additional land in Manhattan. You can only build up unlike nearly everywhere else in the nation that’s begun to sprawl. Which of course means that the demand is outstripping supply.
See, unbuyers market. Those that can read might also refer to this as a “seller’s market”.
Peep game:
The median (midpoint) price for a condo or co-op apartment rose 15 percent to $915,000, according to the Corcoran Group, one of New York’s biggest brokers. Surveys by two other brokerages, Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead, showed 14 percent growth, to $828,000.
A survey by Prudential Douglas Elliman showed lower growth, at 6.4 percent, but a median price of $850,000.
Got damn. I’d love to say that puts housing prices in D.C. in perspective, however, I still think that prices are just too damn high here as well. There is no reason that a shell of a townhome should cost $400,000 in a neighborhood where folks still get robbed in broad daylight.
Like mine.
What this does let me know is that it is very likely that there is no way in Hades I’ll ever be copping a spot in Manhattan. Unless…
Even Manhattan’s bargain (comparatively) areas are getting into the act. “Prices are way up, uptown,” said Miller, “and the market share is much higher.” Many Manhattanites, priced out of other areas, have turned to Harlem and points north.
Hmm…do tell.
Corcoran lists a two-bedroom, 2,000 square-foot condo in Central Harlem for nearly $1.8 million. All told, Harlem prices rose a whopping 56 percent this year, to a median of $610,000, according to Halstead.
According to Liebman, Harlem will be a very hot market. “It’s easily commutable, many of the buildings have Central Park views and there are a lot of great buildings to redevelop; it has good bones. You get the most bang for the buck there.”
Ruh-roh.
You know, I’m not from New York but have been enough times where the allure of the city doesn’t excite me anymore. Now it’s just another place. However, I’ve always had this mystical like view of Harlem and it’s importance to the Black community.
It had a Renaissance for God’s sake. Do you realize how many niggas know what Renaissance mean solely because of the Harlem Renaissance?!
So with people looking for more bang for their buck, and rightfully so, you do realize that Harlem as we once knew it is ripe for the pickings and clearly on the way out. Black people?!
Do you hear me?
Harlem is on the way out.
Interesting enough, it almost baffles me why it’s taken so long for Harlem to completely flip anyway. Sure there are lots of white people making that trek currently. I remember walking down 125th Street and seeings lots of white people and thinking to myself, “I wondered when this was going to happen.”
Though let me also say this, I’m not sure who my world would react to the loss of both Harlem AND Bed-Stuy, as is happening. That’s just too much of a shock to my system. It’s like losing Morehouse AND Howard.
Fact is, housing is cheaper at a time when nationwide, gentrification is happening left and right. As much as I theoretically hate gentrification, I do understand it’s social implications. Though apparently all the Black folks in my neighbhorhood didn’t get the memo since white people STAY losing in my neighborhood.
In November, while getting out of his car after work, a chap was forced BACK into his car, robbed, THEN forced to enter his home where he was tied up and subsequently robbed again.
In my neighborhood. D.C. stand up. And this amidst $600K and $700K homes. AND not an isolated incident.
Nobody said gentrification was going to be easy.
And oh yes, Baltimore is insane. Do not live there.
Fact is, Harlem is going the way of the condor and with relative housing prices like they are in New York City…
…get ready to hear about the new reincarnation of the DipSet records…in Hoboken.