A $2,750 Studio With a Fireplace and Other Worthwhile Listings

Anyone hunting for a New York apartment this autumn already knows the math is punishing. According to Curbed’s latest roundup of worth-a-look listings, a shocking number of two-bedrooms now rent for more than $4,000 a month and sell for more than $1.5 million. Houses hovering around the $2 million mark are turning up mostly in Crown Heights and Bed-Stuy, a price point that invites a particular fantasy: looking at a $2 million house and assuming you’d simply redo the kitchen, as if another $150,000 were lying around after the down payment.

The column’s author, who says last week’s gloomy take drew plenty of reader feedback, decided to approach this week’s batch with optimism, which they describe as a vital part of the city-dweller’s DNA. The results range from the charming to the head-scratching.

At the low end of the rental list is a $2,750 studio anchored by a turn-of-the-century fireplace. It eats up precious floor space, the writer concedes, but is fabulous anyway. A $2,900 one-bedroom has a dark, unremarkable kitchen but opens onto sunlight and parquet floors, while a $2,600 one-bedroom is photographed at night, which the writer says undercuts its value but is good news for the renter’s wallet. A $3,850 one-bedroom is a floor-through with wide planks and a better oven than it needs. A $3,600 one-bedroom with original details, modern finishes and muddy terra-cotta bathroom tile earned top billing, and a $4,750 prewar one-bedroom sits in an elevator-and-doorman building on Riverside Drive.

The $3,450 two-bedroom earned a tribute to its sunken living room. Bigger rentals drew more skepticism. A $5,500 three-bedroom brownstone duplex is called a criminal price given the state of its bathroom, though the writer suggests a price drop may be coming. A $6,100 two-bedroom lacks a washer-dryer, and an $8,000 three-bedroom prewar has a kitchen and bathroom that don’t scream $8,000.

On the sales side, a $1.65 million three-bedroom with double-height ceilings and parquet floors is praised as a beauty that has lingered on the market, with almost enough room for a grand piano. A converted church on Hicks Street, now listed at $1.75 million after a $46,000 price drop, has strong bones and double-pane casement windows, though its bathroom tile reads as the work of a developer who let an algorithm decide. A $3.4 million two-bedroom, included just for fun, features exposed brick and a subterranean Roman bathing complex; the listing says it captures the true spirit of its neighborhood, and the writer wonders if Noho’s spirit really is a Roman bath. An Eastern Parkway prewar three-bedroom at $1.75 million has an ugly kitchen but beautiful bones, a $3.495 million four-bedroom is described as a Gilded Age mansion that HGTV got its hands on, with its balustrades, stained glass and mahogany built-ins surviving the makeover, and a $1.825 million loft near the Navy Yard has high ceilings, bookshelves and a washer-dryer but, in the writer’s view, an ambitious ask.

The roundup closes with a bit of fantasy shopping for a hypothetical $4 million budget: a four-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bath townhouse of 3,520 square feet on West 71st Street with original details to restore, and a two-bedroom at the Apthorp, about half the square footage but set in one of the city’s grandest prewar buildings.

The column’s advice is simple: good luck out there, and think positive thoughts.