A Tour Through the Dark Side (New Builds With Amenities)

New York apartment rentals are described as harder than ever, with even poor studios renting for thousands and attracting long tenant lines. Listings across Crown Heights, Park Slope, Bed-Stuy, Chelsea, and Cobble Hill include both prewar and newer-build options. Crown Heights shows a $2,500 one-bedroom with a potentially problematic kitchen and interior-facing concerns, and a $3,200 two-bedroom with ample space and windows despite renovation issues. Park Slope includes a $2,900 one-bedroom with south-facing windows, good tiling, and parquet floors, plus a $2,900 studio with a dated, ceramic-tiled bathroom. Larger Park Slope brownstones appear at much higher prices, including $11,900 and $13,950 four-bedroom units.

"Listen, it's not as though getting an apartment in New York has ever been easy. But one could probably argue it has never been harder than it is right now. The most god-awful studios are regularly renting for thousands and thousands of dollars with lines of interested tenants out the door. Here, we'll find the actually worth-looking-ats, the actually worth-the-costs, and the surprisingly affordable-for-those-parquet-floors from around the internet."

"Guys, I tried to do something I seldom do here: take a more serious look at new-build apartments instead of immediately dismissing them in favor of my preferred prewars. While the latter will always hold the key to my heart (and you'll see a lot of them listed), some of the amenities I saw this week in more recent developments were appealing. Maybe we'll blame the heat for that? On the neighborhood crawl this time around: Crown Heights, Park Slope, Bed-Stuy, Chelsea, and Cobble Hill."

"$2,500, 1-bedroom: Sturdy, dependable prewar with just the faintest whisper of a kitchen issue - you'd maybe need to jettison the fridge or embrace a "fridge in the bedroom" lifestyle. Isn't that what the skin-care girlies are into? The price is right, but I'm sensing interior facing based on the listing images. You've been warned. $3,200, 2-bedroom: Tons of space and windows, which eclipses the bad kitchen and bathroom renovations."

"$2,900, 1-bedroom: Cute but micro apartment in a brownstone building with south-facing windows. Good tiling and parquets. $2,900, studio: They just don't make them like they used to, do they? Would happily be left for dead on the floor of the baby-blue ceramic-tiled bathroom. $11,900, 4-bedroom: Giant brownstone that's sort of clumsily renovated, but it's also an entire brownstone, so one should not complain too much."

Read at Curbed