This Just In: It’s Expensive To Buy Here

Confirming what you assumed to be true, it is nearly impossible to buy a home anywhere near the national median home price, and when you can, it tends to be a studio or some such thing:

The question sounded laughable: Given that the national median home price recently calculated by the National Association of Realtors is $220,000, is it possible to buy something for that price in New York City?

Or even, just to provide some wiggle room, up to $250,000?

The initial reactions of real estate brokers in all five boroughs included: “Hah,” “C’mon” and “Yeah, right!”

But then they searched Web sites, peering, virtually, down the avenues, streets and cul-de-sacs of communities beyond the neighborhoods they normally serve. And sprinkled here and there in every borough – even in mind-rattling Manhattan, where the current median price is $750,000 and the average price is $1.15 million – they found what Willie Kathryn Suggs, a broker in Harlem, called “hidden gems.”

To be sure, those gems were rare, usually small and sometimes very much in need of a lot of polishing. And, in large part, they were limited to co-ops and condominiums. Only a few single-family homes below $220,000, or even $250,000, could be found, and only in the far reaches or still-struggling enclaves of the boroughs outside Manhattan.

In the Wakefield section of the Bronx, for example, a two-story wood-frame house on a 25-by-100-foot lot sold for $249,000 last month. It was, however, described as a “handyman special,” requiring a lot of work. And in the Rockaways – that 11-mile sliver of south Queens once known as “the poor man’s Riviera” – five bungalows are currently listed for $209,000 to $243,000.