where it's at

Like most New Yorkers, I've become obsessed with real estate. Where is it, how big, how much is it are more than passing questions; in a city this crowded and desirable and flat out expensive those questions are practically life or death. (Or more precisely, life or New Jersey.) Anywhere else, it would be rude to ask about rent when walking into an acquaintance's apartment. Here, "What's the rent?" is more than expected, it's practically a lapse of etiquette if you don't ask. As David Sedaris once put it, and I'm paraphrasing, "In most of the country, couples remain married for the sake of the children. In New York City, they stay together for the apartment."

Even though I'm happy in my current apartment--I celebrated my fourth anniversary here a couple of weeks ago--Just this past weekend, I considered checking out two open houses in my building, and was strangely intrigued by a report of a friend-of-a-friend who looked at a 2BR co-op in Queens (within a short commuting range) for $200,000. A two bedroom apartment in my neighborhood, or most of the rest of Manhattan, goes for about four times that price, and even though I don't need the space that badly, it's tempting to know that I could afford it if I want.

Anyway, I mention all of this by way of introduction to this fascinating article in today's N.Y. Times. It looks at why people like and feel comfortable in certain apartments, what makes a house a home, etc. Like most things psychological, a lot of it supposedly relates to childhood memories (we either want a place that reminds us or where we grew up, or a place that's completely different from that) and also to personal identity. Again, maybe it's a New York thing, but I thought this was really interesting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/realestate/12cov.html?pagewanted=1