Yeah, the S. Slope is becoming ridiculously large!

I'm 11217

Yah Nick,

I spent 19 years of my life in the Real Estate Industry here in B'klyn. I have watched the borders of too many neighborhoods to count change. It is a natural function of the underlying greed in the system. I grew up in Bed. Stuy. We used to joke about its borders in the 1960's. The joke was that if anything bad happened anywhere in the borough and involved Black people it was Bed. Stuy., anything good happened in Bed. Stuy. it was Crown Heights.

The sad truth is that all of the Neighborhood names were coined by developers and brokers. Certain places were considered to be slums and others were considered to be elite. I remember in the early 70's, when I used to go to 3rd St bet. 6th & 7th to buy pot that it was considered to be a slum. It was full of Hispanics and Blacks and no "good people" would set foot there other than to buy drugs or sex. The same was true of Ft. Green. In the 70's the start of Lafayette Ave. and the entire area around BAM was B'klyn's principal Prostitution Stroll. It extended all the way to Flushing Ave. Another area that no "good people" would enter. At one time the Brownstones of So.Portland were impossible to sell. The banks had the entire area "redlined" and if you could get the cash together you could buy any of them for less than $20,000. Now if you can find one for less than $1.5 million; jump on it.

To me the saddest part of this entire dirty business is the fate of the really great people who lived in these areas from the 1950's to the 1990's and preserved what was good in the neighborhood. These people, mostly of color (euphamism) were the backbone of the community and were casually thrown out by speculators and "good people, who were only preserving the architecture". I guess that is the sad but inevitable way of life here in NYC.

But.... This system is unsustainable. There may come a time in the not too distant future when the regional economy takes a downturn and the "good people" who have spun the price of real estate up to its current level get caught in a down spiral and start to experience just what the people they displaced experienced. Their mommies and daddies won't be able to bail them out when their companies go belly up and they can't make the $2k - $4k monthly nut. We are seeing foreclosures around the country right now in the Luxury and near Luxury markets. When demand declines and supply remains constant price equilibrium falls to a lower point (basic college economics). When the price point and thereby market valuation drops many of the "good people" who are only 3 paychecks away from being like "those people" will discover that their equity has vanished. They may also discover the joys of negative amortization. Karma is a bitch.

I'm hustling right now to get together a couple of 100K to get out of NYC while the getting is good. I'm moving to a mid-sized southern city where for $250k I can buy a 3,000sq.ft. home with 4brs and 3baths on 2 acres of land. This area experienced its market "adjustment" 2-4 years ago and has reached a new equillibrium. If any of you "good people" and others want to hear about how to do this send me a PM. If rats desert a sinking ship they do so after the people smart enough to get into the lifeboats do so first.