It's eat or be-eaten in a lot of NYC. And don't let NYCers talking about themselves get you all twisted up... NYC is still not the rich-capital of the world!
London has operated on these principles for centuries, my friend. New York has only been this way since after the despair of the 1970s faded. And London, by the way, is still home to more of the world's billionaires than NYC. The shopping choices shows. NYC is way more convinent for luxury, but London is much more varied, exotic and classy. City life in Britain also requires a lot more dress-up than NYC does; so the high-end shopping is basically a staple diet--even for the common.
NYC has nothing to show to compare to Harrod's department store, the absolute quintessential department store for the entire world. Crazed people from far-off countries literally fly from whatever hovel country they live in (like... bleah... Austrialia... LOL) to beat down Harrod's door. I don't think there are many places on the planet where you can grab a £27,000 fur coat and a £1.95 quart of milk under one roof.
[And let me tell ya... when Wanamaker's was in its prime time... Harrod's even as it exists now makes Wanamaker's look like a Gap Limited Outet]
I had the pleasure of living in Earl's Court (buying in Earl's Court, while there's not much classy property there, is still extremely expensive). Most of London is brownstone after brownstone, with little back gardens and wide sidewalks. It isn't graced with a lot of skyscrapers, but the transit options there make living in a far-flung out city easy. It's nothing to live all the way up north in Wimbledon and work in the Docklands. In Philly that distance would be like the Hajj. In NYC that distance would put you past the Tapen Zee bridge.
And even with all that... London's uber-wealth just isn't flaunted. You can spot billionares going to the same theatre to the same play on the West End Savoy that cost you £50--the same what they paid for [London theater is EXTREMELY CHEAP! It is a MUST-DO if you go there!] It's also nothing to see Hollywood stars and BBC actors on the bills on many West End shows. For less than 100 pounds I got to not only see Patricia Routledge 3 rows back from center stage for an Oscar Wilde play (
The Importance of Being Earnest) but I also got to chat with her at the after-play party. [And she can really sing!] And this is one of the best-known comedy actresses in all of Britain! [Molly Sugden, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders are the other ones.]
As much as telling your out-of-state friends you're paying for a $1.3 million dollar
apartment in Manhattan seems to shock and awe the folks back home... in Manhattan it still means that
you're a nobody! Who needs that? Is the lifestyle really worth it? Does it help your retirement or you not saving anything for floating all the debt--because most real-estate owners are not paying for their pads in cash--they're paying for it in high-ass debt.
15 years ago the very idea of
buying an apartment up there was just unheard-of. All that has changed since Guliani, really. There are good sides and bad sides to everything of course, and the bad side to NYC is that basically there is an "electric fense" which keeps out most of the poor and pushes those people out into the Bronx.
Those people living here in Point Breeze probably would feel right at home, and probably would live safer in the Bronx. This is the hidden side of NYC that's not talked about much. And is the borough most have written off. "Oh don't go up there" people say.
There are some sides of Manhattan that have just started turning and there are some good deals to be had. For instance, if you really have to have a place in Manhattan--Spanish Harlem is probably the best buy right now if you need space. You can get pads for less than 300K and about the same space as most Philly high rises.
Washington Heights has not completely turned and only recently some buildings there are coming out of rent control. If you're willing to put up with almost no-subway access... this is an area to look at.
Other than those two zones (almost every Harlem brownstone has already been flipped repeatedly), you're pretty much eff'd and you're gonna have to shake that Fannie Mae heiny!
For me, if I had to jump ship from Philly but stay in the Northeast, I would just skip over NYC and go to Boston [got more extended family in Mass]. I cannot deal with drawing $100 out of an ATM machine twice a day.
