(Photo: Frances Roberts)

… Williamsburg
Bushwick/Ridgewood
“Hipster renters have been here for more than eight years, taking all the old factory spaces,” says AptsandLofts.com’s David Maundrell, who has witnessed similar transformations of Dumbo and Williamsburg. But condo projects—like it or not, the death knell of a true bohemia—are coming soon, and they’re cheap. Maundrell says new and redone apartments are available for $350 to $425 per square foot. (Similar spaces in Greenpoint would fetch $500 to $550 per square foot, and in Williamsburg, $700 per square foot.) At 159 Evergreen, brand-new one- and two-bedroom lofts are priced between $280,000 to $385,000.

… Upper East Side
Long Island City
For years, the buzz about Long Island City has been that its time is about to come. But with one high-rise after another announcing its impending arrival in the neighborhood, including the billion-dollar Silvercup Studios development and Queens West (not to mention the nearly-completed Arris Lofts high-rises), its long- debated transformation may have reached a tipping point. Über-marketer Michael Shvo’s (the man behind high-profile projects like the Jade and 20 Pine) has already made the swim across the East River. He expects to be marketing more than 3,000 new apartments in Long Island City in the next three years and predicts that his Manhattan clientele will follow him there.

Related:

• Archive: “Real Estate”
• Articles by S.Jhoanna Robledo
• Table of Contents: September 11, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!