Brooklyn Rentals This Week: Pick Your Poison, From $2,100 to $15,000

Finding an apartment in New York has never been easy, but Curbed’s weekly rental roundup argues it has rarely been harder than it is this autumn. By the site’s account, grim studios are going for thousands of dollars a month, with lines of would-be tenants waiting to see them. The column, which hunts for listings that are actually worth a look, took on Brooklyn this week and arrived at a thesis that reads like a spoken-word poem: you can have windows or bedrooms, original details or a bathroom ravaged by the Home Depot tile aisle, the neighborhood you want or some cash left over to take the train there.

The top of the market, per Curbed’s picks, is steep. A five-bedroom is listed at $15,000 a month, which the writer notes works out to $3,000 per person if everyone pays on time. A freestanding mansion at $7,800 for three bedrooms comes with herringbone floors, stained glass and 18 windows on the first floor alone. Another listing, at $8,950 for two bedrooms, occupies a former public school, giving it what Curbed calls a strange but intriguing layout, plus a fireplace. A $6,275 two-bedroom is an industrial loft across from the Navy Yard, and a $6,000 two-bedroom duplex has exposed beams and an attic bedroom the listing pitches as an office.

Not every entry earns a rave. A $7,250 three-bedroom in a brownstone in what the column calls stroller heaven has nice windows, but the writer suspects it is a single floor being billed as three bedrooms and suggests readers investigate for themselves. A $3,850 one-bedroom is described as not for the imagination-challenged, needing an inspired eye and some elbow grease.

The more approachable end of the list is where the trade-offs get specific. A $4,100 three-bedroom in a 1920s Queen Anne-style building has good bones but a tired bathroom and few windows. Even so, Curbed calls it the best deal the writer has seen in that neighborhood in some time. A $4,250 three-bedroom offers waxed parquet and a blinding amount of natural light, along with possibly faux marble in the bathroom and an equally blinding amount of track lighting. A $3,750 two-bedroom on a parlor floor has been over-renovated, though traces of charm remain.

The cheapest picks have their own bargains and compromises. A $2,895 one-bedroom is a co-op in an elevator building with built-in shelving and rounded doorways. Because the building dates to 1942, the column jokes the details might be called mid-war rather than prewar. A $2,100 one-bedroom sits in a building whose prewar lobby Curbed says would be in the running for an Emmy for Best Lobby, though the apartment itself is merely fine. At $2,150, another one-bedroom is cheap and far away, with parquet floors, arched passageways and colorful bathroom ceramics. A $3,500 ground-floor two-bedroom has stained glass and hardwood floors, plus what the column calls a grim bathroom, because life is about trade-offs.

The column’s closing note is a resigned one. The writer says she picked Brooklyn again because she never learns her lesson, and signs off with a request for help before promising another round next week. For renters weighing a lease this fall, the message is that bathrooms and window counts are where the compromises tend to land.