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Sign up for The Listings Edit, a Weekly Digest of the Most Worth-It Apartments in New York City

It’s not an ideal time to move in New York. Apartments are small and somehow getting smaller, beloved neighborhoods are becoming chillingly corporatized (there’s a Panera Bread–PF Changs–Blue Bottle triangle on University Place now, people), and let’s not even get started on the rent. Things are bad. So bad that sometimes, when I see that another Beaux-Arts building that has gone the way of CVS, I think of lying down on the sidewalk and just giving up. The city’s rapid transformation into an unaffordable suburbanized mall is enough to make me ask myself the one question no New Yorker wants to ask out loud: Should I just LEAVE? 

Well, the answer is no. Because between the stinky, crowded, rat-infested cracks of New York is the best city on earth! There’s nowhere else to go! Sorry! Which is where this newsletter (and I) comes in. I’m Nora DeLigter, a writer with 30 years of experience living and moving in New York City. I also happen to be a real-estate nut, a person who helps everyone in my life find an apartment, and I am not fooled by DIY ceiling medallions or hollow beams masquerading as structural ones. Or stained plywood (we’re looking for cherry), or decorative fireplaces, or overly varnished parquet floors.

In this relaunched version of The Listings Edit, I’ll bravely take to Streeteasy, Craigslist, and Zillow and wade through 365 pages or so of listings. Every Thursday, we’ll debate whether an apartment’s proximity to Fort Greene Park makes it worth ignoring its leaky, drafty bay window, or if anyone even uses the golf simulator on the 23rd floor of that amenities building — so that if you’re moving, you can make an educated choice. We’ll talk to real-estate agents about why certain places are going for so, so much (and how the winning tenant got their offer accepted), debate which of two similarly priced townhouses is worth the cost, and figure out who lives in that turret that you never noticed before in the middle of Soho. And even if you’re not planning a move: Who doesn’t like to gawk at nice apartments?

The Listings Edit Newsletter Is Back!