Kelly Kreth

My Favorite NYC Apartment | Staten Island Dream Apartment

Bed Bugs In My Astoria Apartment? How I Had To Leave My Dream Home

I Lost A Chance To Buy My East Village Apartment In The 1990s

I Lost My Dream Home And All I Got Was This Lousy $50K

Today being Valentine's Day, our collective attention is turned to love (and maybe chocolate). But in New York, some of the most complicated relationships of all are real estate-related. You'll often find New Yorkers longing not for the great love who got away, but for the stellar apartment that slipped through their fingers. After all, finding a liveable, well-priced NYC apartment may be harder to find than a soul mate.

While we all sometimes feel we're being robbed by New York City's high real estate prices, real thefts--robbery, larceny and burglary--are down 60-80% from the early 90s, according to the NYPD’s CompStat report. The risk of burglary is lowest if you live in a doorman building. Apartment insurance broker Jeff Schneider of Gotham Brokerage says he rarely gets claims from apartments in doorman buildings, and insurers even give a small discount for having a doorman or security guard. Thefts that do occur in "attended" buildings tend to be crimes of opportunity committed by workers or delivery people who can access the building, he says. Schneider says most burglary claims come from walk-up buildings versus elevator buildings without doormen. I've lived in the city 15 years now--mainly in walk-up apartments--and thankfully my own worst story of an apartment-related theft consists of a bottle of hard-to-acquire soda and a bag of steak bones stolen by my late former super. But not everyone can say the same. Below, some real life tales.