Is Manhattan the New Brooklyn?

Priced out of Brooklyn's hippest neighborhoods, young professionals who may have once fled Manhattan in search of affordable housing and "postindustrial charm" are making the reverse move in search of cheaper rents, reports Laura Kusisto.

1 minute read

July 26, 2012, 8:00 AM PDT

By Jonathan Nettler @nettsj


With the average rental price of a studio apartment higher in Williamsburgh than in Greenwich Village, and trends indicating the disparity will continue, "once-dedicated Manhattanites [who] crossed the bridge to Brooklyn reluctantly" are astonishingly making "the reverse move with some trepidation."

Kusisto follows 33-year-old Pilates studio owner Kate Artibee, and her husband, Nick
Smallwood, who "moved to the Upper East Side in late 2009 after she had lived
in Williamsburg and then Park Slope for 13 years and was feeling priced
out."

"We could afford the tiniest studio you've ever seen in Park Slope,
or move to the Upper East Side and live in a brownstone," Ms. Artibee
said.

"She hesitated when asked whether she considered her new neighborhood 'cool.' But she said she and her husband have grown to love the area
around their apartment on 87th Street between York and East End avenues,
which 'has the charm that you would want in Brooklyn that is quickly
disappearing.'"

 

Tuesday, July 24, 2012 in The Wall Street Journal

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