Prospect Park South?

great area but the transportation sucks. if you work in midtown you are looking at a solid 1hr commute.

I suggest you check the site www.brownstoner.com. Choose the drop-down box for "Ditmas Park" under "neighborhood". Also, you can type in the addresses of the houses you're looking at to see if they've been covered as "house of the day" or "open house picks."

Transportation is great, actually, if you don't live on the F train side of the nabe. The Q stop at Beverly is only seven stops from the city, and lots of people love it (see these Yelp reviews for pros & cons - http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-q-train-new-york). If you drive, many houses have driveways and garages.
The houses are amazing, but unless they're fully renovated expect to spend a lot of dough/time working on your place. In part this is just because they are HUGE, and it costs a lot more to have a six-bedroom house painted than a studio. But they are also mostly wood-framed and -sided, so there's a fair amount of upkeep. Worth it, to my friends who live there. Too much work for me...

I think NY Magazine just did a little piece about Ditmas Park, no? There are some nice sections down there, and some good quality housing stock. It just depends on the block. The closer you get to Flatbush and Parkside, the busier it gets. That part of Flatbush, especially at night, can feel a little grittier to some. There's definitely a nascent restaurant scene around Cortelyou (the Farm on Adderley, Pomme de Terre, a couple others). The subway isn't terrible if you can use the Q, which runs pretty quickly into downtown Manhattan (Canal St and Union Sq), but it's still a fairly long commute compared to the closer Brooklyn neighborhoods, especially if you need to make it to midtown/uptown, as junkman said above.