Manhattan Loft Guy

Nov. 13, 2006 - death, taxes and � private school tuition? / the politics of stay-or-go

do Manhattan private school vs. suburban public school anecdotes make a story or just sell papers?

Fascinating piece in Monday’s NY Times about parents leaving Manhattan for the idyllic schools of ‘burbville and then end up springing for private school tuition anyway. I am not going to get much not the content, as you should tread the story. There is lots of stuff there.

It seems to me that the papers often run certain stories on a cycle: first a young-adults-moving-to-‘burbs-for-cheaper-living story, followed six months later by a young-adults-moving-back-to-city-for-any-kind-of-living story. But this one is a new angle on me.

It is good as “news” because it runs counter to mass assumptions (a la a man-bites-dog story). When these stories are built on anecdotes, however, I wonder how ‘real’ they are. Has the Times come across a developing trend? Or have they just run a story that will justify the choices of Manhattan residents to stay put?

causation or coincidence?

There is one sense in which I think the history of Manhattan loft living is related to schools. I believe there was a general trend beginning ten or fifteen years ago for families with children to stay in Manhattan (rather than move to the ‘burbs for the ‘quality of life’ for their kids) because the Manhattan qualify of life not only improved, but was the subject of many news articles as starting to improve. So more people were drawn to larger apartments, often to lofts.

the lure of PS 234

More people who had the money to choose to send kids to private school instead of opting for the ‘free’ public school sin high-tax towns like Scarsdale and Great Neck decided to stay. PS 234 in Tribeca had at least some impact on this in the 1990s, as it became a ‘poser child’ school for loft-dwellers who wanted to send kids to public schools.

I suspect (no data, so don’t ask) that the typical loft buyers n the last fifteen years are younger than the typical apartment buyers, and more apt to have school-age kids. So my hypothesis is that if the quality-of-life in Manhattan had not improved for families, fewer lofts would have been developed these last 15 years.

Just a hypothesis.

touchy arguments this week in some households

Read the Times article. Fascinating stuff. I am sure there are some parents of three-year-olds who are having the stay-or-go argument this week because of that front-page article, which was the most frequently emailed article of the day on NYTimes.com.

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on matters of interest to Manhattan coop or condo loft apartment dwellers, buyers, sellers, and others, especially about New York City real estate

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Manhattan Loft Guy

Nov. 13, 2006 - death, taxes and � private school tuition? / the politics of stay-or-go

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