Tenancy in common

We have townhouses, not townhomes.

And Tenancy In Common is some bizarre and shady-sounding California thing.

And there are plenty of representatives of the criminal classes in New York right now who will outbid you to keep the townhouse as a one-family house for themselves, or even combine one that's already been split up into one big house for themselves.

Why can't you just want to buy a coop apartment in a former townhouse, like everybody else with no imagination wants to?

Which is to say that those houses are worth much more as houses than as chopped-up apartment buildings.

Look to buy in a small co-op. They exist in the Village (and in Chelsea, which has blocks that are just or almost as pretty). My Chelsea townhouse co-op is full of people who said they'd only buy in the Village. ;-)

http://streeteasy.com/nyc/building/3-gramercy-park-manhattan works that way. The residents own it as tenants-in-common under a co-ownership agreement.