Here's one reason you may not want pot to be legalized in New York

By Lucy Cohen Blatter | April 20, 2015 - 11:45AM

Happy 4/20 everyone! Before you start writing to your local politician with a plea to legalize your friend Mary Jane, think about what it could mean for real estate prices in a city where the rent is already too damn high.

According to Trulia, home prices are significantly higher (ahem) when cannabis clubs are within a one-mile radius.

In Boulder, Colorado, where pot is totally legit, homes were twice as expensive as the median within a mile of a cannabis club; in Denver, they were 1.8 times more expensive and home prices near clubs in Seattle were one and a half times the median price. (One 420-friendly Craiglist poster living in Colorado was recently marketing his home as a much cheaper alternative to Queens living, however, as we discovered in March.)

To think of it in NYC terms, if marijuana were legalized you could be looking at a median rent of $6,790 near cannabis clubs in Manhattan, $5,786 in Brooklyn and $5,904 in Queens, and close proximity to a cannabis club could push median sales prices to $1.94 million in Manhattan; $1.2 million in Brooklyn and $892,000 in Queens. Talk about a buzz kill.

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