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New York City is one of the most difficult real estate markets to navigate in the world.  Its awe-inspiring size combines with its many idiosyncrasies and unique real estate market dynamics to overwhelm even experienced home buyers.

Of the many important details about the New York City real estate market, the co-ops are perhaps the most unique.  Though their strict standards for accepting new residents into their buildings have saved New York City a good deal of the turmoil that most of the rest of the country has suffered as result of the subprime mortgage crisis, the process of dealing with a co-op as a buyer can add weeks and even months onto a typical job search. 

This extra time leaves busy professionals with even less time to…

Economists in the government are some of the most callous people in the world.  When calculating inflation, they take out changes in food and fuel in order to stabilize the monthly and annual inflation numbers.  The numbers in this “core index” are then bandied about across the media as the true inflation rate.

That may work well and fine for your favorite international corporation operating out the local Death Star, but for regular people, food and fuel are some of the biggest parts of their budget.  Hence the disconnect between the low inflation numbers in the media and your wallet that seems to magically eat a few extra twenty dollar bills each week. 

The situation in the country as a whole is getting pretty crazy, especially as oil…

New York University has long attracted students with its excellent location in the center Greenwich Village.  However, as numerous disappointed freshmen will attest, more and more of their housing and even classrooms are located in different areas of the city.  The university recently even started housing students on the other side of the river in Brooklyn.  Add to this NYU's student housing in Chinatown, and the picture of the urbane school in Bob Dylan's old stomping grounds becomes more and more removed from the reality of a dispersed, city-wide campus.

As NYU expands its student housing into Brooklyn and other areas of New York City, and other major New York City universities like Columbia continue to expand, more and more students are…

Most people under thirty planning on moving to New York City approach finding an apartment to rent the same way they usually find a job, car, bike, or even a date:  they go on Craigslist.  More often than not, though, the notoriously difficult New York City rental market breaks the will of these go-it-aloners like a sadistic, push-up happy drill sergeant does his cadets.

The biggest factor in any rental market is inventory.  For those that don't know, inventory in regards to rental markets means the percent of the city's rental apartments that are currently available to rent. 

Since the middle of the 20th century, New York City has had low inventory rates, usually defined as below 5%.  Nowadays, however, the situation has become almost barbaric:  The…