If you had to pick a neigborhood...

Bronx - you have to explore - prices for renovated apartments
on Bruckner Avenue are being reduced 15% - lofts in area
exist, including well known Clock Tower - start there and
ask around, explore further

Hey lowery! - that was my first guess too. Not seeing many listings.
There are still some pockets of industrial / warehouse-y buildings in LIC and Queens.

LIC is pretty much eaten up by speculation, unless you're way far from mass transit. Funny, I'm remembering having gone to a warehouse type building off Greenpoint Avenue over by Review Avenue years ago and thinking, "this space can't cost much....."

Bruckner Blvd (South Bronx) has a building called "The Piano Factory" that I think rents lofts, but they don't look big. There's the Clock Tower, who ran an ad for about a thousand sq ft for under $1,000/mo. last fall. Across the intersection of Bruckner from Clock Tower is another loft building that looks like it may rent living spaces. I was in that area this morning and saw that the renovated walkup apartments on Bruckner Blvd (new kitchens) had lowered their asking rents from $2,300 for a two-brm to $1,900 and from $1,900 to $1,600. But these are in tenement buildings, not lofts. If you walk around that area you'll see lots of signs of people living in what were warehouse/industrial spaces not long ago. The market is not hot. I also checked out Alexander Avenue today and saw the dreaded "townhouse for sale, Corcoran Realty" sign hanging on one of the rowhouses. Really nice spaces, and a few of those buildings have been rehabbed. Lots of NYCHA projects surrounding Alexander Avenue. There's been a renovated three-bedroom apartment on Walton Avenue advertised recently, and I think I know which building it's in - at corner of E.158, across from courthouse. Prices are not going up..... what's going on with Sherman Creek plans in Inwood?

South Bronx had a tiny bit of hype over the past few years and then I heard... nothing. I know some of the townhouses there were snapped up and redone. Does sound like there's a decent rental selection in the area...

I don't really know anythinga bout that Sherman Creek situation other than what I posted on the other thread. Do you? I wish those Inwood prices would come down, I feel some properties are overpriced, but that could be my wishful thinking. And I'm still looking in Qns, Bkyn as before... What's your current story? Were you in Bronx to buy or just happened to be in the area?

I saw stories on internet about Sherman Creek being the focus of a movement to renovate the waterfront and rumors of a new development of luxury highrises, so I walked there last wknd to see what Sherman Creek was. I found that new parks are being built around the area, including a nice boathouse, and there's a beautiful greenway with bike paths from Swindler's Cove south to about 157th St., b/w the Harlem Drive and Harlem River. Very beautiful, with jet skiis and boats zooming by. I suspect Inwood prices will come down like everywhere else, and I have wondered as you have about the low-rise buildings and parking lots in the section closer to Harlem River.

I moved to the Bx earlier this year as part of a forced downsizing - i.e., income nuked by economic situation and going from bad to worse. I suspect Qns/Bkln will come down in price, but for me prices there were still at such a premium over Bx that I opted to dive right in. Hell, everything else had changed on me, why not the territory? I prefer the Sugar Hill section of West Harlem to most other areas in Uptown Manhattan and to all of the Bronx, but could not afford it yet. If you like that area, I suspect prices will go down there as well, but the area is beautiful, and when RE comes back, Sugar Hill would be a good investment. I think East Harlem is more overpriced than anywhere in the 5 boros, but I think Central Harlem is a good place right now and will be like UWS in another 10 years.

If you make the dive across the Harlem River you'll find that prices plunge more than across any other dividing line between neighborhoods. Much more than, say, going from LIC to Woodside. I think the hype about "SoBro" has come to a sudden halt, which can only be good for a shopper, but there are scarey things going on - apparently vast swaths of the West Bronx (Art Deco 6-story bldgs) were bought by private equity firms like SG2 with the expectation of rising rents. Oops........

I'm not being ironic - if I was an artist and wanted a badass, bigass space, I'd be out of Manhattan altogether. I'd get a map, draw a circle around Manhattan that represented a 60-90 minute drive, and look within that circle. I'd opportunistically look to buy an entire building in a tough industrial area like Newark, or Jersey City, or even further out - wherever the most financial hardship had wreaked havoc on the area - the kind of building that had a curb cut and drive in area for a car (no additional cost for parking that way), yet was within a 60-90 minute drive.

Newark? Freeport?

Hubby and I went to Jersey City to see Canco and some of the artists there were saying that the rising prices were beginning to trouble them . . .

ali r.
{downtown broker}

Lowery, why do you prefer Sugar hill over central Harlem?

Front_Porch:

How is Canco? Friend of mine mentioned it to me as an awesome loft bldg, with a nice vibe. I am not looking to buy, just curious.

mimi, it's the rows of houses with trees in front of them, it's the parks, the new swimming pool, Edgecombe Avenue with a view out over rooftops, it's Riverside Drive - but I think Central Harlem is terrific also - not a thing wrong with it - I'm curious to hear what it's really like to live there - I noticed those people you mentioned on the sidewalks somewhere in the 110s as well, but they didn't bother me - Central Harlem has more "services," as they say, but there's nothing like Convent Avenue, and I favor hilly terrain - mostly I envy the relatively clean streets and sidewalks of Sugar Hill and most of Harlem compared with Bronx, where litter is enough to make you cry, and graffitti. I think there must be a concerted campaign in Uptown Manhattan to work on those issues, but Bronx doesn't figure as high on the priority list. However, I have seen W.145th St. and W.181st St. on a Sunday morning and the knee high detritus is just as bad as E.161st St. in DaBronx

malraux - you're too late to find cheap rough raw space in the places you mention, but I think people may find what they're looking for in the Bronx still, especially if the most recent wave of investors get flushed out when things don't turn out how they'd expected

tandare or others if you're seriously interested to know what's going on across the Harlem River, there's a "SBX Film Festival" next wknd with shorts and features at several small, funky venues, beginning at the Bruckner Grill Friday night, 1 Bruckner Blvd., at Third Avenue

I have an exquisitely renovated, BIG 1-BR in Inwood for $329K on a beautiful block. Tandare....?

:)

we liked Canco, but it is really in the sticks -- that was the negative for us -- I think in the more PATH-accessible part of Jersey City, you could get by without a car, but out there you'd really have to have one, I think . .

ali r.
{downtown broker}