Open House Picks

“This ain’t Kansas City, people. It’s the capital of the world.”

Capitol of the third world, maybe.

7100 is still historically low.

lots of people are new here and don’t realize that there was life before 2000, when around 10,000-15,000 homes were on the market at any given time.

20,000 and up in some of the even rougher times of the early 90’s and 70’s.

7100 is terrific. building has nearly come to a halt.

when this current inventory gets bought up, prices are going to get might tight again.

and THAT feels great!

Nokilissa,

2:34 here, from yesterday, finally answering your question about why people like/love Carroll Gardens (none of the other answers were mine). By the way, I think CG is still cheaper than PS — you have to compare prime CG with prime PS, and you find the place blocks of CG aren’t as expensive as the best PS blocks.

Other posters have already addressed your question of shopping and good restaurants. Smith St. may be getting too many chains, but there are new interesting places opening up on Court St. and Henry St. In fact, given how small the entire CG area is, there are probably more in a smaller square radius than in PS.

In addition, the elementary school that most of CG is zoned for (not this Sackett St. property, however) is very well-liked by families in the neighborhood. PS 58 still remains relatively unknown beyond neighborhood borders, but that’s probably why it’s not crowded — class sizes are as low as 19 or 20 and never larger than 24. You only have to look at the posters around the neighborhood announcing this coming “multicultural week” activities to understand why parents and kids love it — there are author readings, multicultural music and dance performances, and breakfasts for parents featuring food from different countries/cultures. And the posters feature a dazzling array of beautiful kids who are students at the schools who represent the diversity of the families who attend. Every student at the school learns to play violin, viola, bass or cello (one of the few schools city-wide with this program), there’s a french dual language program, and the test scores are pretty much on par with the other good elementary schools in Brooklyn.

But the main reason families like the school is probably the same as the reason they like the neighborhood — that it is extremely small in scale. Living in Carroll Gardens is getting the experience of being in a small town while living in a large city. Your neighbors ring your doorbell if you forget to move your car on alternate side street parking day to let you know. You go to Carroll Park or walk down Court Street and end up saying hi to a dozen people you know by name. You walk into the elementary school and know every teacher and administrator by name, and they know you and your kid.

Granted, this is definitely not for everyone. If you hate the small town atmosphere, where you have to stop and chat with your neighbors when you see them working in their front gardens, you won’t like it. Lots of people move to NYC from other places because they like feeling anonymous in a big city.

And, CG does lack a park, although it’s certainly easy to get to one any weekend. But, it is full of trees and gardens, and when you walk down a place block in spring you are amazed at how restful and green it is. It’s also not as “diverse” as some other neighborhoods if you are specifically talking about people of color, although there are certainly many people from different cultures living in the neighborhood.

I’m sure Park Slope residents have many similar things to say about their neighborhood, and I am in no way saying Carroll Gardens is better or worse. Different strokes for different folks as they say. But just trying to explain what people like about CG. You get a small town feel with all the advantages of living in the city. Probably not what lots of people are looking for, but I suspect most of the people who want to live in CG will tell you that’s what they like about it.

The price of housing will indeed continue to rise, just like the price of everything else.

The people who think that NYC is in for anything other than a temporary blip before prices start to rise again have never been outside the country to see that NYC is still a bargain compared with almost every other major world city.

This ain’t Kansas City, people. It’s the capital of the world.

I prefer seeing the 2 million plus brownstones for Open House picks.

They are the prettiest anyway.

The cheaper brownstones are in the crime-ridden, gross neighborhoods.