Kelly Kreth

I Lost My Dream Home And All I Got Was This Lousy $50K

Today being Valentine's Day, our collective attention is turned to love (and maybe chocolate). But in New York, some of the most complicated relationships of all are real estate-related. You'll often find New Yorkers longing not for the great love who got away, but for the stellar apartment that slipped through their fingers. After all, finding a liveable, well-priced NYC apartment may be harder to find than a soul mate.

While we all sometimes feel we're being robbed by New York City's high real estate prices, real thefts--robbery, larceny and burglary--are down 60-80% from the early 90s, according to the NYPD’s CompStat report. The risk of burglary is lowest if you live in a doorman building. Apartment insurance broker Jeff Schneider of Gotham Brokerage says he rarely gets claims from apartments in doorman buildings, and insurers even give a small discount for having a doorman or security guard. Thefts that do occur in "attended" buildings tend to be crimes of opportunity committed by workers or delivery people who can access the building, he says. Schneider says most burglary claims come from walk-up buildings versus elevator buildings without doormen. I've lived in the city 15 years now--mainly in walk-up apartments--and thankfully my own worst story of an apartment-related theft consists of a bottle of hard-to-acquire soda and a bag of steak bones stolen by my late former super. But not everyone can say the same. Below, some real life tales.

Two years ago, after living in the Yorkville section of the Upper East Side for nearly eight years, I was super excited to return to my very first NYC stomping grounds, Hell's Kitchen. Then after being struck with an illness (Lyme disease) that made living in a walkup with no laundry too hard, I went looking for an affordable unit that had an elevator and in-building laundry for the same price. Quite a task--and quite a feat when I pulled it off. The added bonuses were that I got a doorman, which I never expected to be able to afford, and the apartment is rent-stabilized. Also, at $1,811 per month (don't you just love the weird prices of rent-stabilized units?), it's $200 less than I was paying before. Downside: Moving back to boring, sterile Yorkville. But, beggars can't be choosers so off to the Upper Least Side I went.

A couple of months ago I moved from a crappy tenement building in Hell's Kitchen to a doorman building on the far East Side neighborhood known as Yorkville. My new alcove studio is actually $200 per month less than my tenement apartment, which was a two-bedroom walk-up. This new apartment is rent-stabilized, which is why it's a relative steal. My new place comes with some luxuries I never had before: a dishwasher, in-building laundry and a doorman, which totally beats having to wash my own dishes, lug my laundry downstairs and across the street and most of all a super who would make the building less safe by keeping our building doors propped open. What's not to love about all that?! Well turns out, a few things.