Inwood: Dyckman Street near Broadway.   (Photo: Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao)

Inwood still flies under the radar, despite all that recommends it. The vibe is familiar to anyone who lived on the West Side in the seventies—in fact, you might think of this neighborhood as the Upper Upper Upper West Side, a place where your neighbor may very well be a Broadway cellist or working operatic tenor. The community is famously tight: Locals recently raised money for well-loved local businesses uprooted by a fire that wiped out a large building on Broadway—and the neighborhoody services are all in place. In fact, says Barak Realty’s Francisco Menendez, “in terms of economic potential, Inwood has more commercial spaces than Washington Heights, for example.” A new flea market, dubbed Inwood Flea and founded by the owners of the vegan-takeout service Chickpea & Olive, recently finished its second successful weekend. Though buyers tend to think of Inwood as very far away from midtown, the express A train is a lot faster than you may remember (that straight shot from 59th to 125th works wonders). “People tend to come and stay for a long time,” says Gus Perry of Stein-Perry Real Estate. “A lot of our renters become buyers.” Yes, there’s a lingering unsexiness, but of course that’s what gets you deals. According to StreetEasy.com, the median price of available properties here is $299,000, roughly a third of Manhattan’s overall. Prices for co-ops and condos fell 4.6 percent from 2010 to 2011, according to the appraisal firm Miller Samuel, and, says Perry, the market has since “plateaued.”