Will Harlem suffer more than other areas?

Specifically where is it? Harlem is huge.

A year or more ago, NY Mag did a realestate-implosion cover story, making guesses about each neighborhood. Harlem did better in their analysis than many would guess, because of its charming housing stock and extensive subway access -- but of course that's only in comparison to more marginal areas.

Also, NY has smart petty criminals -- they know to go where the money is.

As I recall the article was much harsher on the decline in Harlem, Brooklyn and Queens than let's say Park Avenue, the west village, the Gold COast -- which would be less affected.... You should pull the article -- it was interesting.

Thanks alanhart. It's below 125 and close to Malcolm X

Sadly, yes. Such is the interaction of racial and market logics in our late consumer capitalist society. For all the talk about this being the beginning of a "post-racial" century, the likely trajectory of the Harlem real estate market (inter alia) gives the lie to that delusional claim. To be sure, the property interest in whiteness ain't what it once used to be. The past few days have exposed a fault line in one of the foundational stories white racial states and markets have branded to prove the justice of white capitalist dominion over the world, and in NYC (and most especially Manhattan), the unquestioned right of the white upper and middle-class professional populace to the right address (which also happen to have the best free schools, police protection--cops and doormen, fresh food, easy transportation, no lead paint, well-maintained parks and sidewalks). Of course, "color-blind" credit markets or wads of case subsidize-- and will no doubt keep subsidizing-- that racialized right. My friends, I think we're witnessing the auto-cannibalism of white American consumer/finance capitalism.

depends -- if it is one of the high priced new condos I think they will take a bath
if it is one of the hdfc ones -- likely no change
if tax abated and low maintenance and you get it for 20% or more below last summer pricing then I would take it

likely if you are at $600/sq ft you are ok

That said, I intend to buy a property (most likely a townhouse) in Harlem sometime in the next 12-18 months, just above 125th Street smack dab in the middle of Harlem.

what is the story on the kalahari on 116 and 6th? I see they are renting out some units now. I looked at it pretty seriously in february, but decided to hold off making the switch from renting to owning because i didn't feel good about wiping out my savings in this environment.

lucifee, i'm renting in harlem in one of the "luxury" with different rates according to income levels. a friend from the building bought 2 years ago in the kalahari and has yet to be told when she can move. the kalahari is huge, one part seems to be finished, but the one where she bought is not complete. don't even think about buying there!!! (my 2 cents)

mimi -- it's pronounced "Lenox". I'd stay away from Mt. Morris Park, which gets a little too partyish on weekends. Parties escalate. Also, I believe there's a sizable clump of projects on Lenox around 118th. Not sure, but I think they're not great. Overall, I'd tread very carefully, wait it out, keep your down payment in something safe, and see what you want to do in a couple of years -- especially if Harlem isn't your first choice at any price.

manhattanfox -- Gold Coast is in Chicago. Or the north shore of Long Island. Not in NY. Despite what brokers/NYMag might tell you.

cherrywood #1 -- blah blah blah blah yaaaaaaaawn.

cherrywood #2 -- that said, I don't think you'd enjoy living smack dab in the middle of a historically Dutch neighborhood.

As a previous poster pointed out Harlem is a rather large area.

East Harlem which has only recently started improving will likely be the hardest hit. The new East River Plaza is getting a Target, but Home Depot was thinking twice about the space, and my sublet it. Costco was originally involved in the project but pulled out- but they are re-considering only this time in the sublet space of Home Depot.

Central Harlem will have results which will be incredibly spotty- with some sections doing very well, others poorly. The 125th St rezoning should help with the bulk of this East/West stretch, although I wouldn't be surprised if some of the large national retailers decide that it may be too risky of a time to move forward with their plans.

West Harlem- has three distinct neighborhoods Morningside Heights, Manhattanville and Hamilton Heights. Morningside Heights has become more like the Upper West Side, so I think it will be pretty stable. Manhattanville, home to the Columbia expansion, has only a small residential area and will be fine considering how signficant the Columbia property is in relation to the neighborhood. Hamilton Heights (my neighborhood) has seen tremendous appreciation and I think in the shorter term (perhaps 2-4 years) it will get hit hard. In the longer term Hamilton Heights will see a rebound, and will likely far outpace increases throughout the city due to the proximity to the Columbia expansion, great transportation, parks, and the Sugar Hill housing stock.

Alanhart, are you referring to the drumming parties? or maybe that there are there other types of partying at the park that can escalate to violence?

semerun -- good breakdown. Although I wouldn't consider Morningside Heights part of Harlem at all. Maybe you mean the sliver immediately EAST of Morningside Park, as far as 8th, which is a great area of Harlem. I lived there 01-07. And as I've said on this board before, I don't think Columbia's expansion will have much effect one way or the other. Don't know about the 125th rezone, but it's a nightmare as is, serving as the conduit to the Triborough, a major enough shopping strip for triple parking, and home to about 83 different (mostly major) bus lines. Where in Hamilton Heights are you?

mimi -- no, I don't mean the drummers. They either annoy you or not. Personally, I love them and think I would even if I lived within earshot. I'm talking about big picnic-type things, amplified music (permitted or not I don't know), hot summer afternoon/evening things that seem inappropriate for a park. And spill out onto nearby sidewalks too. Don't know how late they go.

Keep going! Harlem is the future jewel in the crown of Manhattan. Property value will be triple in 10 years.

Admin - thanks for the intel. Pretty much confirms my intuition and why I didn't jump during the presale.

Does anybody know anything about 1280 Fifth? Timeframe on sales? I think this could be considered East Harlem. What these units likely will go for and will they be offered anywhere close to the ridiculously priced units at 15 CPW by the same architect?

harlem's a ghetto no matter how you spin it... buyer beware; it's more like an extension of the bronx demographically. I know this link is old as hell but check it out as food for thought http://www.nedap.org/programs/images/Foreclosure_Actions_NYC_large.gif

Alanhart, I initially had the same opinion as you did about Morningside Heights not being part of Harlem, but after signficant amounts of reading and meeting a couple of local historians, I have come to understand that Morningside is part of Harlem. I believe the western boundary of Morningside Heights is Riverside Drive and the eastern boundrary is Morningside Drive- so it's actually West of Morningside Park. The late George Carlin was a Morningside native and he referred to it as "White Harlem"...and just as poor.

I did see your recent comments regarding the Columbia expansion on a different thread. I agree that efforts to improve Morningside failed for many years despite the presence of Columbia. I do think that the Manhattanville expansion is different and not quite the same comparision because there is a lot of support (despite the very vocal but small number of protesters) to the south as well as to the north of the neighborhood with no neighbors to the West. To the East is a massive housing project- but I have walked past it at all hours day and night and did not feel like I was in any danger, although it did feel a bit creepy at 1 am since there were no people or even cars around on a summer Saturday evening- although with that will change with all the new students, researchers, restaurant row when it all starts coming online. The waterfront park at 125-135th with water ferry access is also coming online soon (it was supposed to open in May and looks nearly done). Fairway's move into the area also gives it a boost as one of the largest and best supermarkets in Manhattan. How much of these types of changes were available in past efforts to improve the Morningside over the years?

While I am new to the neighborhood- I have prominent reminders of Manhattanville's past- after my dad got back from the Vietnam war, he briefly worked in one of the meat packing plants near 133rd st while he was going to college. He initially thought I was nuts when I told him I wanted to buy near there because his last memory of the area was running for his life being chased by gangs.

I live in the upper 140's near Broadway- and on my block investors include a very prominent Economist and a billionaire family. A couple of the apartments in my building were for sale, and both had multiple price cuts. Both have now been pulled from the market since they weren't selling- so I have already seen the weakness in the area. Given the events of this week on Wall Street, I would expect that the weakness will turn severely negative- but as I said, long term I am very bullish, the next year or so will be a great time to buy in the neighborhood if you have a long term horizon (and only if you have a long term horizon).

Alan Hart-- blah, blah, blah back at you. I notice you didn't have anything substantive to say against my argument. As for the Dutch crack, I'm rather looking forward to planting the rare tulip bulbs I just brought back from Utrecht in the backyard. They'll remind me of another notorious chapter in the history of capitalism's occasional epidemics of irrational exuberance. They have just perfected a new species called the Alan Greenspan.

The place that I am thinking about is a renovated prewar couple of blocks from Marcus Garvey Pk. I wonder if the noise spills there. Lenox seems very noisy, with loud buses and some screaming that seems dangerous (somehow it seems like people is fighting but it's more like a cultural difference in voice volumes). I don't mind the drumming either, personally. I actually treasure this kind of expressions.

"Harlem" means several things to people, depending on who's talking: (a) geographically the East Side above 96th Street and the West Side above 110th Street, with MH carved out, because "harlem" also means; (b) African-Americans in NYC; and (c) poor people.

All of this is no different from every other area in NYC that has changed as higher income people have been forced out of the neighborhoods they regard as spiritually and culturally theirs, but which cost too much money for them to live in. Harlem is no different. It is on Manhattan Island and has better mass transit access to Midtown and Downtown than anywhere. I include Bklyn Hts in that because you can get fr 12th St. to Wall St. damned quickly and if the subways fail you can hike it, etc.

I'm glad to hear about the Kalahari, because I was interested in it also, but was turned off by their attitude that they were so immune to market forces ("our prices are only going up, not down") even while they had to slow-release units. I was skeptical they were the success story they claimed.

Prices will go down there because upper middle class people priced out of tonier neighborhoods will stop moving into Harlem as quickly. Longer term, it will be not much different from the Upper West Side, and already there is nothing in Harlem that's any worse than all of Chelsea the first time I visited New York in 1976. And it is Washington Heights where the drug trade is centered, not Harlem, though Harlem has plenty of crime.

oops, 125th, not 12th.

The answer to your question, irregardless of how you choose to define the area of Harlem, on an average comparative basis, is "yes."

i like living in Harlem. but being a latin, i have lower standards than most americans (my husband and in laws included). i give you a few examples of hwat you have to put up with and will likely get much worse with the recession:

* 116th close to douglas is populated by western africans that pray in an extremely ugly place several times per day. htey stay outside of the building most of the day and will not move when they see you walking by. so i feel like i'm surfing with teh stroller avoiding hitting them, not always successful. the surfing also goes on to avoid fetid stuff on the sidewalk, like bones of chicken that women sell to these guys. there are tons of trash cans, but these are beneath them. this said, i did found some respectful people (open the door for me one in the post office, for example).

* teh huge picnic going on each weekend in the otherwise beautiful morning side park should be a little bit controlled. the place smells like propane or sth used for their barbecues. bottom line: not fully enjoyable during weekends unless you join the picnic (this we didn't try, as we will be the only non african americans in the endeavor)

* the driving of some african-americans with huge SUVs is scary, the red light will not stop them from intimidating you. they drive in a violent way, not giving you the feeling that they can fully control their vehicles if needed.

* daylight petty drug deals can be spotted (although rarely).

* people on the line for the food pantry and food stamps (each month it seems to me that there's a new line, which makes me feel the R is much worse than admitted) on 116th again makes me feel guilty when walking by after grocery shopping. (this is due to my catholic upbringing maybe)

that say, transportation is great, the new playground in morningside and 116 is lovely and i've been told that pre-k at PS 180 and the principal there are awesome. no place is perfect but sure enough people are not gonna be willing to put up with hte flaws when cheaper living arrangements can be found somewhere else.

another thing i forgot that was shocking and upsetting to me when i first moved here (now i'm more used ot it) is how african american moms shout to their toddlers. very violent to my taste, they shouldn't allow themselves to do that. always without any need.

forgot to mention that there were 3 murders closed by last year, teenagers killing teenagers. i was deeply sad for days after each incident.

ADMIN...and you like living in Harlem. It sounds like a different country.

Alanhart -- I don't understand how a $7 Billion Columbia Univ. expansion, further into Harlem, will not have a positive impact on the area. Please explain.

julia,

i didn't mention thinks i love thinking that other people wouldn't like them. for example, i love that people here talk to you and say "hello". sometimes people from other parts of manhattan say that they hate "having to talk to people". i don't like that. also, my husband works really close by and comes home for lunch and plays with our baby... i love that!!! you cannot beat a 5 min walking commute (i do hate commuting, a lot!). like any other place, there are positives and negatives, and not all of those are objective.

dg156, will be a huge positive. people with much higher purchasing power coming will have an effect improving the quality of retail. also the walkable area next to the hudson river (which seems beautiful in drawings at least). tons of public space won mostly to decrepit warehouses.

Thanks Admin for the info. I don't mind the cultural differences, loud voices etc, I am form south america and lived in the east village 20 years ago...
I am more afraid of violence and crime and be scared to walk in 119 o 120 and Lenox at night...Since it's central but definetely east of Morningside Heights, where it's seems more safe...

mimi, admin, dg156, semerun --

I currently live at W. 139 & RSD, but lived at W. 117th & Morningside Ave from 2001-07. It's interesting to hear about the problems in my old neighborhood as described by admin. I was relatively oblivious to some of them just because of the angle and frequency I approached the subway was different, and I walked through Morningside Park or drove much more than took the subway. But what you describe exists only at the intersection of 116th & 8th. I suspect the owners of three out four corners were holding out until the rest of the area improves before redeveloping, but they missed the boat.

But at least closer to where I was, most of the long-term black residents were originally from the very genteel upper south, or recently descended from people who were, and speak firmly but not abusively to their kids, and instilled a deep sense of respect. Similarly, that's a guiding principle instilled by the principal of PS 180.

The park picnic situation is out of control, and similar to what I was describing in Mt. Morris Park, but mostly confined to one small (arguably prettiest) part, near 113th St. Still more subdued, though.

mimi, I think you should wait a couple of years to decide whether to buy, but if you like Harlem you might take a look at http://www.streeteasy.com/nyc/building/371-west-117-street-manhattan and http://www.streeteasy.com/nyc/building/370-west-118th-street-new_york (together forming one condo, with long tax abatement/exemption and low CCs, and mostly with great views of Morningside Park), and other properties hard by that stretch of Morningside Park (i.e. not east of 8th Ave).

As for Columbia's expansion, I'm not saying it will have a negative effect. I'm saying that Columbia's been in Morningside Heights since the end of the 19th Century, as a top university, and its immediate neighborhood went into an extremely deep decline in the 70s and 80s, while Columbia's presence didn't deter that. In fact, at that time undergrad students weren't forced into campus meal plans and the like, and so supported local eateries much more than they do today. I'm saying that the expansion will cater to grad students, who tend to live farther away from campus, and last I heard will have residences. Employees can support a certain amount of local lunching, but that's about it. The projects, while not bad ones, line the other side of Bway. Most of all, an elevated train structure (though beautiful and landmarked) will always creep out those at street level, and deter retail. I'm fully in support of the expansion, and reject arguments against eminent domain (because Columbia is not private, but not-for-profit) -- I just don't think it will boost the neighborhood. I feel the same way about sports stadiums, except that pro sports teams are private entertainment businesses and should get no government support. But that's another show.

Morningside Heights was, in the revolutionary war era, a part of Harlem (on a Columbia building you'll find a plaque commemmorating The Battle of Harlem Heights), but for the past 100 years has rarely been referred to as Harlem, except by white racists who assumed that its (then) minority population meant it should be mentally glommed onto Harlem (i.e. blacktown), and by Harlem "community leaders" who have a ceaselessly expansionist sense of where Harlem is, such that they block the use of subneighborhood names (Central Park North, for example) in all but the most established cases. But it's also worth noting that during the colonial period, when the settlement of New York hadn't spread beyond the very southern tip of Manhattan, Harlem existed as an entirely separate settlement centered on the East River. Its grazing commons (and this, finally, is my point) extended to what is now the West 80s. So I'm not buying any modern definition of either the West 80s or Morningside Heights as part of Harlem.

I think Harlem will suffer in the short-term, but not as badly as people think. I think the neighborhoods that suffer the most will be the ones that cost 85% of what a comparable place would in "prime" Manhattan. Places like Williamsburg and Hoboken where new construction goes for close to $1000 a square foot. Harlem is just SO much cheaper (new construction is $500-$700 and prewar uner $500) it's not as if a 15% decline in prices in say, the West Village will make people who were buying in Harlem buy in the West Village, because they still couldn't get the value they will in Harlem.

I think the biggest risk to Harlem is a decline in the city's tax-basis will means fewer cops and more crime (especially with more unemployed people).

Long-term, though, I am very bullish on Harlem. Great subway access, lots of good architecture, parks, etc. I actually think Central Harlem will ultimately do the best, just because it's the closest to midtown Manhattan and Central Park. West Harlem is much more of a hike, and East Harlem doesn't have the architecture and has so many projects (Central Harlem has that stretch on Lenox from 112-115th, but that's really it).

More importantly, though, people need to stop thinking about their homes as just investments. Never buy your primary residence expecting appreciation. It's good to think about the risk of depreciation, of course. So if you are looking at buying in Harlem, make sure you can actually live there.

I don't have a totally return-to-ghetto expectation for Harlem, but I also don't buy this from today's NYT: Harlem Holds On http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/realestate/21deal2.html?_r=1&ref=realestate&oref=slogin

harlem will tank, but then bounce back

I second lowery.

The NYT article is typical -- 1 or 2 examples to make a point, and then a vintage quote from the infamous slick Willie Kathryn Suggs, the authority on Harlem

I have not seen willingness by sellers to budge in either UWS or Harlem -- at least not in the exuberant manner that many here seem to suggest for the downturn.
They are indeed "holding on" so far, other than the occasional drop.
Many grossly overpriced brownstone shells or decrepit brownstones have indeed come down in price to only a rating of obscenely ( presuming that gross is grosser than obscene) overpriced. This reflects the current difficulty in getting construction financing.
So, there is an opportunity for the bullish or vulturish, but not quite yet I think - a $1.2 million shell with no construction financing could be an albatross
On the others, there seems to be the emergence of some financing by the developers (257 w 117th, which is quite an unattractive building) and it will be interesting to see how this takes off. Others seem to prefer sticking renters in there to cutting price. Where there are a few units left this is likely smart. Not sure what the $1000/sq ft boutique Harlem developers are thinking given the bunch that just broke ground near 122 and FD.

I agree with most on this board that the bubble has burst, but so far it seems that the pin prick has initiated a slow motion video, and we should see ripples and spray in due course.
Whether blood will flow in the streets of Harlem is easy to answer - it already does with some frequency. Hopefully, that is not the kind we'll see more of.

joedavis, 100% agree with your comments on soha 118 and pseudo-researched NYT articles
alanhart, true, my comments are mostly about the area close to 116th and douglas.

mimi -- it's pronounced "Lenox". I'd stay away from Mt. Morris Park, which gets a little too partyish on weekends. Parties escalate.

lol - who are you kidding, whilst i hate how much refuse is left around the park it's not like there is a shooting there every weekend or something - it happened once in the last year since I lived here.

My issue with Harlem is that it is way overpriced in relation to the number of restaurants/cafes in the area. People are treating it like it's an expensive area when the facilities are lagging (quite significantly).

if it drops about 30% then it's probably in line with the rest of manhattan and would be a good time to buy, yes it may get better 5-10 years from now but where are you going to go to have a coffee next sunday...Settepani.. pulease the bathrooms in that place are atrocious.

Cheers,
Dean

the issue with harlem i always struggle with is a bit related to what somebody pointed out - the lack of restaurants, shopping, etc. does make it seem expensive in comparison to parts of brooklyn where you pay the same amount of money for better amenities. then again, harlem is so close to central park, uws, ues, and midtown which can't be replaced.

i do wonder when the infrastructure does come. a lot of restaurants there have shut down (ginger, harlem tea room, emperor's roe). there isn't that much density of middle to upper class people. but i wonder when that does come. it's got so many low buildings, and so much low-income housing and SROs. i still think it will get there - eventually - but i think it will take another 10 years. what might change this is the 125th street rezoning, but i wonder how much of this will actually happen, given what is going on with the broader markets, economy, etc. who wants to build now?

this is coming from somebody who also wants to buy in harlem - for the long-term - and wonders what the right time is

interesting article from 1991 ... puts this all in perspective. i think the person who said harlem will suffer a lot in the short-term and rebound strongly is right.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.htmlres=9D0CE1DB1531F93AA1575AC0A967958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

deanc -- to clarify, I meant stay away from *buying* near Mt. Morris Park, not to avoid walking near or in the park. I think most people who would consider buying in Harlem these days have a lower threshold for crime than simply counting murders, including the OP.

kspeak -- link doesn't work. What's the headline?

From the New York Times, 17 years ago ... this puts it all in perspective.

Prices Decline as Gentrification Ebbs
Published: September 29, 1991

IT was in 1986, near the height of New York City's real estate boom, when Victoria Irwin paid $125,000 for her 400-square-foot studio in the Christadora House, a newly refurbished 17-story condominium on Avenue B in the East Village. Her eighth-floor windows were directly over Tompkins Square Park.

"I knew there was some gentrification going on, but it didn't bother me," recalled Ms. Irwin, who is married to Mayor David N. Dinkins's press secretary, Leland Jones. She said the things that attracted her to the East Village then -- and still do -- are its diversity, bohemian spirit and resistance to change.

But by the summer of 1988, the dark side of that bohemian spirit became clear. In several violent clashes with the police that started in Tompkins Square Park, rioters made the Christadora House a symbol of what they considered the evils of gentrification, hurling bricks through its lobby windows, shouting obscenities at its residents and painting the epithet "Die Yuppie Scum" on its exterior.

Now, Ms. Irwin, a freelance writer, is one of a growing number of scholars, real estate executives, advocates for the poor and financially squeezed property owners who are witnessing the end of gentrification and are turning their attention anew to its checkered impact.

"I still think the East Village will get better, but I wish I could find a buyer," she said. Since marrying Mr. Jones in 1988, she has lived in Queens, rented the studio out on a month-to-month basis and tried, so far in vain, to sell it, even at a loss.

In some corners of the city, the experts say, gentrification may be remembered, along with junk bonds, stretch limousines and television evangelism, as just another grand excess of the 1980's.

"There was clearly a tendency to over-reach," said Peter Salins, a professor of urban planning at Hunter College. "Whether we are better or worse off because of gentrification is a judgment call. But what we ended up with at the peak of the cycle was a bunch of naive entrepreneurs, and the economic downturn has only exacerbated their problems."

Although the good and bad of gentrification may always be in dispute, all agree that the process has halted, at least for the time being. Nowhere in the New York area are waves of developers, investors and affluent young professionals moving to squalid, low-income neighborhoods as they did starting in the 70's and in greater numbers in the 80's.

As a legacy, some late blooming neighborhoods have been left with uncertain futures. When newly converted co-ops and condominiums sit on the same blocks as boarded-up buildings and garbage-strewn lots, it is difficult to foresee whether values will be set by the bad or the good.

At its height, gentrification moved in many directions at once. By the end of the last decade, the Lower East Side, the blighted blocks of Clinton west of Times Square and the Manhattan Valley section of the Upper West Side had all felt at least a first wave of speculative investment, co-op and condominium conversion and affluent young residents.

So had Fort Greene, Prospect Heights and Clinton Hill in Brooklyn and parts of Hoboken and Jersey City.

WHERE the process began in the 70's and was well advanced by the mid-80's, experts say, building improvements, new stores and higher levels of homeownership appear to have brought permanent improvement. They point to the Upper West Side from 86th Street to 96th Street, SoHo, Park Slope and Hoboken, all areas where, as recently as the 70's, buildings were abandoned and entire blocks blighted.

But the neighborhoods where gentrification came late have been particularly hard hit by city's economic downturn.

"As the dust settles, we can see that the areas that underwent dramatic turnarounds had severe limitations," said Elliott Sclar, a professor of urban planning at Columbia University. "Rich people are simply not going to live next to public housing."

Recent case studies of the Lower East Side and Manhattan Valley -- bounded by Amsterdam Avenue, 96th and 110th Streets and Central Park West -- provide a detailed look at what happened in the 80's and raise new questions about the fate of those neighborhoods in the 90's.

"When people visit, they often comment on how much better the block looks," said Teresa Kilbane, program director of the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, a low-income housing group. "But if you ask the people who were forced out of the neighborhood, the opinion would be different."

Ms. Kilbane, who has lived in a railroad flat on 105th Street off Amsterdam Avenue since 1980, has analyzed rising property values and displacement of poor residents from Manhattan Valley.

A study on the Lower East Side released last week by Frank DeGiovanni, a professor of city planning at the New School for Social Research, tracked a fivefold increase in the prices paid by landlords for apartment buildings between 1980 and 1988, to an average of $43,000 per unit. It also showed the start of a downward cycle in 1989, when the average dropped to $40,000 per unit.

In the aftermath of the steep price increases, he said, there may be a reduction in maintenance and services by landlords who bought their buildings at the peak.

"The supposition is that landlords are in a bind, and can't afford to maintain their buildings," he said.

While the landlords are being squeezed, the sharpest impact has come in a steep decline in co-op and condominium values.

Both the East Village and Manhattan Valley "have begun to revert to their former state," said Clark Halstead, president of Halstead Properties, a Manhattan brokerage. He refers to the process now under way as "degrentrification."

Property values have plummeted throughout the city, as much as 30 percent in some neighborhoods. But in the partially gentrified areas, he said, the decline has been steeper. Some apartments have sold for half what their owners paid; some seem unsalable at any price.

The decline is reflected in several current listings. One is Ms. Irwin's. She began asking $132,000 for her studio in 1988 and has since lowered the asking price to $115,00, but has not had a bid.

Another owner in the Christadora House bought her 1,100-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment for $270,000 in 1986 has been trying to sell it for 14 months. She first asked $305,000 and has lowered her price to $260,000. Her only offer so far, which she rejected six months ago, was for $220,000.

Two blocks away, on 11th Street between Avenue A and Avenue B, the owner of a two-bedroom co-op on the top floor of a renovated five-story tenement has received a bigger blow. He paid $186,000 for it a year ago and has been trying to sell it for four months at $89,000. So far, no takers.

Manhattan Valley is experiencing a similar decline. The neighborhood has for decades been populated by low- and middle-income Dominican immigrants and Puerto Ricans, residents of 2,057-unit Frederick Douglass Houses, a public housing complex, and students at Columbia University.

Real estate executives say the gentrification of the neighborhood began in earnest in 1983 after William Zeckendorf Jr., the developer, opened a 35-story condominium, the Columbia, at 96th and Broadway. The apartments sold out quickly. While the Columbia falls just outside the boundary of Manhattan Valley, as the first new market-rate housing construction anywhere nearby in decades it encouraged investors to move north of what had been regarded as the upper limits of Manhattan affluence, 96th Street.

"Ninety-sixth was considered a demilitarized zone," said Andrew West, an accountant and real estate broker who became an investor in Manhattan Valley in 1987, buying insider rights to several apartments in a building being converted to condominiums at 102d Street and Central Park West.

He then sold his interests in all the apartments except a large two-bedroom with two bay windows that command a sweeping view of Central Park. Although he declined to say how much he paid for the apartment, he said he was offered $420,000 in 1989, which, henow sorely regrets, he turned down.

"When I bought I expected the whole area to be gentrified and to attract a better class of people and services," he said. But over the last two years, "Manhattan Valley has really been hit."

Now, Mr. West and his wife, Lisa, who have two children, want to move to the suburbs. But first they must sell the apartment. They began listing it for $330,000 in May and have not received an offer.

To be sure, the partially gentrified neighborhoods have in some ways been stabilized by the real estate slump because their new residents, like the Wests, cannot afford to move.

"The growth of these neighborhoods may have halted, but it is not in retreat," said Mr. Salins. "The yuppies are not moving back to Cleveland or Great Neck."

Some of the fashionable boutiques and restaurants that followed the affluent newcomers have come and gone. In the most dramatic exodus, more than 25 galleries that sprang up in the East Village in the early 1980's, making the remote, squalid blocks from Avenue B to Avenue D an international center of avant-garde art work, have left, most of them taking space in the better established gallery center of Soho.

"I moved because the location became inaccessible to most customers," said Pat Hearn, owner of Pat Hearn Gallery, which she operated on East Ninth Street between Avenue C and Avenue D from 1985 to 1988, then moving to Wooster Street off Broome Street. Although her rent was not raised on East Ninth Street, she said many of the other gallery owners left because their East Village landlords tried to impose large increases.

STILL, many of the new businesses have remained. In the East Village, which has for decades supported a rich diversity of ethnic restaurants, new sidewalk cafes and nightclubs line the blocks near Tompkins Square Park. Dry cleaners, video stores, fruit and vegetable stalls and other retailers are thriving. On Avenue A between Sixth and Seventh Streets in the East Village, and at 110th Street and Central Park West in Manhattan Valley, new supermarkets have been in business since the mid-80's, providing the first full service food distribution in each neighborhood.

And while some analysts, including Mr. DeGiovanni, maintain that the recent spate of investment in rental buildings may leave some financially squeezed landlords unable to maintain their buildings, tenants' rights advocates say the landlords appear to be working harder to keep their tenants.

"My impression is that there has not been an upsurge in complaints," said one analyst who has repeatedly charged landlords with neglect and harassment, Michael McKee, director of the New York State Tenants and Neighborhood Coalition. Because of the depressed real estate market, in which landlords are unable to raise rents when their most expensive apartments become vacant, "they are not eager for vacancies," he added.

Thus, the jury remains out on gentrification's impact. But while the process has halted, academic research is providing the first detailed assessment of how it changed the demographics and economic makeup of neighborhoods in the 1980's.

Mr. DeGiovanni, who did his study for the Community Service Society, focused on 446 rental apartments in 335 buildings on the Lower East Side, from the East Village to Chinatown. He interviewed the tenants of the apartments and analyzed property transfers, first in 1984 and again 1989.

He found that a third of the apartments changed hands and that 77 percent of the people moving into the neighborhood were white or Asian. The biggest outmigration was among Spanish-speaking people and those from Spanish-speaking countries, who represented only 19 percent of those moving in and 34 percent of those moving out.

Income levels rose sharply. Prof. DeGiovanni said 37 percent of those who moved into the neighborhood had incomes over $20,000 a year, compared to only 14 percent of those who moved out. Indeed, 51 of those who moved out were living in poverty, with household incomes under $10,000 a year.

In his interviews, Prof. DeGiovanni said he asked the tenants about their problems with heat, hot water and services in what he called a "scale of probable harassment" by landlords. The results suggested that tenant-landlord relations were improving, with 42 percent of the tenants describing serious problems in 1984 and only 30 percent in 1989.

But, he said, that finding could be misleading because "it may be that a lot of unhappy people are not showing up because they have already been harassed and they are gone."

Ms. Kilbane did her study of Manhattan Valley in 1989 as a master's degree thesis at Columbia University. She said her research was focused mainly on gentrification's impact on the poor through displacement and rising rents.

She found that investors in rental buildings raised rents rapidly either through the illegal harassment of tenants and the resulting vacancies, or through renovations that entitled them to rent increases under state guidelines. In tracking the increases, she analyzed the rents asked for all apartments in the neighborhood that were advertised in The New York Times or The Village Voice.

She found that average rents for two-bedroom apartments soared, from $200 a month in 1978 to $1,124 in 1988.

In that same period, she said, 28 apartment buildings in the neighborhood were converted from rentals to co-ps or condominiums, with the bulk of the conversions in the mid-80's. By far the steepest price increases came just as the decade was beginning, with the prices paid by outside purchasers soaring 363 percent from 1979 to 1982, and increasing only 46 percent during the following six years.

Three years after her academic research, Ms. Kilbane, still a resident and an advocate for the poor, said the process of gentrification has reached an uneasy impasse.

"People who bought into the neighborhood are inclined to stay put because they are not about to take a big financial loss," she said. As for the other, longer-term residents, she said: "Gentrification hasn't done as much damage as we feared. Perhaps because it has ground to a halt."

Ah, yes, "Memories, light the corners of ..... " - which is why I keep saying that no one on this forum talks about long-term, because they seem to view a 7-year horizon as "long," when seven years hardly amounts to a blip. There are two perspectives we can now take from the above article - if you move into the most recently gentrifying neighborhood at the peak of the boom, you will be trapped if you try to sell, and the "changes" in your new neighborhood won't be quite what you bargained for.

OTOH, if you look at things long-term, how many people shopping today would give their eye-teeth and their first-born children to be able to go back in time to the peak of that '80s boom and buy at Christadora House or at 96th and Broadway, even at those then-high prices? It all seems so quaint now.

By far the most sensational news reported in that article was the bricks thrown through the Christadora's lobby and the "die yuppie scum" graffiti. I sometimes get the feeling this is the fear that people have about areas like Harlem in the future. Think about it for 45 seconds: who do you think scrawled "die yuppie scum" on the Christadora back then? It probably wasn't the local Puerto Ricans, but it sure might have been students of NYU! And where do you suppose those hipsters are today? I wouldn't be surprised if they're all hedge fund managers today.

Don't confuse Tompkins Square Park in the '80s with overlooked neighborhoods around the five boroughs where working African-Americans and Latins have gone about minding their business for decades, coping with having to share their neighborhoods with crime and poverty and despair and deliberate removal of necessary City services.

To really round out this stroll down memory lane we need to dig up the NYTimes article about a subway stop in The Bronx, illustrated by a photograph to prove its outrageous claim of the worst form of deinvestment, because only seeing that picture would convince the smug, complacent, isolated readers of what a sick situation we were in: the stairs on the staircase up to the platform of the elevated train in question had not only been allowed to fall into disrepair; they had actually fallen off. People who relied on that subway stop to get to their jobs actually CLIMBED up to the platform by shimmying themselves up the metal banister. Interviews with people undertaking this risky venture revealed the - STOP THE PRESSES! - shocking news that these people with dark skin actually had JOBS! "The closest subway stop after this one is _____ blocks away, or I would have to take a bus over to the ___ line."

The NYTimes asked the Transit Authority why they didn't repair this station. They were told that it would cost $X__million. The NYTimes (or the Straphangers?) investigated and determined that that price was higher per square inch of space than the most expensive high-tech "clean room" construction going on anywhere. Which brought up another interesting aspect of how sick life in NYC was in the '80s/'90s - if it were indeed true that it would cost the Transit Authority that much to rebuild the ravaged subway station, just who would be getting that money and why? That story dropped. Apparently there were just a few too many intersections between widespread corruption and the widespread DEinvestment going on across New York City.

In between there has been huge infrastructure REinvestment in this city, unemployment is much lower, and "gentrification" doesn't mean quite the same thing as it did then.

Before most people on this forum would even dream of stepping foot into the neighborhoods they are hearing about and thinking of buying in, there are MANY phases of development leading up to it, and the gloom and doom about how NYC will collapse into decay again entirely miss those other parts of life that exist outside the narrow world of over $150K-a-year jobs and Starbuck's lattes and cellphone chatter in which every third word MUST be "like": New York City doesn't only attract people with high-paying jobs. There are colleges, universities, conservatories (Juilliard, Manhattan School of Music, Mannes College of Music), art schools (SVA, Pratt, etc.), on and on. And contrary to what most people in this forum's experience seems to be, many recent high school graduates from outside the Tri-State area, as well as from within it, are not well-to-do. They are not looking for "cheap" apartments meaning condos for only $500,000. They are looking to rent for under $800 a month. In the bad ole '80s they were looking for $300-a-month housing.

Thanks for the article. It gives me much more confidence in my belief that manhattan real estate will go back to 2003 - 2004 prices.