Long Island City Riff?

...or how I learned to lament quietly and stop complaining so damn loud.

Yesterday’s NY Post (Shut. Up. You so know you read the Post!), featured Long Island City, Queens prominently on the cover of its real estate supplement.

This neighborhood sits on the waterfront of Queens, next to Astoria and facing Manhattan. It spent much of its early history as a commercial and industrial area, using its proximity to the East River to ship in and out of the city. Lately, this nabe is becoming popular (read: acceptable to admit you live there) and the rents have begun to skyrocket as a result. While developers boast that it’s only "one stop from Manhattan on the 7 train", access into certain parts are actually a bit farther, making transportation somewhat of an issue.

A little over a year after moving to the city, an opportunity reared its head in the paper. In LIC, the Citylights apartment building was completed and units began selling in 1998. According to QueensWest, "The initial prices ranged from a very low $8,200 to the high end of $87,500. The average price of an apartment in Citylights was $35,259 or just $43.27 per square foot."

No. You didn't read that wrong. Stunning views of Manhattan were to be had for those outrageously low prices.

I coulda lived there...I coulda been a contender!

After looking this gift horse right in the mouth, I began to think my future was as sealed as Barbaro. Oh well. It wasn’t the first missed opportunity and it certainly won’t be the last. I did half-seriously look into the idea of purchasing one of these apartments, but several thoughts held me back from even going forward:

A. I was a newbie to the city and all by myself. Didn’t know many of the neigborhoods.

B. This was the era of touting almost any neighborhood in NYC as "up and coming" or the "new Manhattan". It was hard to predict how gentrified LIC would become. There are still some neighborhoods that have been “up and coming” for several years now, with nothing penetrating their orbit.

C. I didn’t know at the time that I would be in the city for so long. I wasn’t thinking long term.

D. At the time, I never really had a reason to set foot in another borough (okay, that was a selfish reason, but I’ve grown tremendously).

Over the years, I played out these factors in my head to assure myself that I didn’t really miss this gravy train. It didn’t get any easier. A short term job opportunity came my way and the offices were in, you guessed it -- Long Island City. From there I went on to college at LaGuardia, which was in -- Long Island City. I really got to know the place. It seemed for awhile that I couldn’t get away from my fateful decision.

Fast forward to yesterday’s article and a mention in Curbed. I learned that the maintenance alone on these apartments is $2600 a month and that was the reason for the rock-bottom prices back then - to throw the steep building mortgage back onto the buyers. After years of kicking myself, I learned yesterday that had I seriously considered buying a place in 1998, I would have been better off purchasing a higher priced apartment in Manhattan and paying a significantly lower amount of maintenance. This could be up to at least 60% tax deductible. Whew! That was an exhausting equation.

I’m a much happier person knowing that sometimes opportunities look good until you read the fine print. Who’s to say I would have liked living there anyway? How different would my life be today? I could have been a totally different person as a result of the move. That might be a good thing or a bad thing.

Sometimes, looking gift horses in mouths (where did that phrase come from anyway?) can be a beneficial thing.