Virginia K. Smith

This week, we venture outside NYC to check out the real estate in a buzzed-about short film, The Listing. Because admit it: You've spent at lease one lazy afternoon, eyeing your dwindling bank account and cruising dirt cheap listings in Detroit, fantasizing about snapping up your own rambling fixer-upper for the same amount you pay in rent every month. But what if that house was ... haunted?! 

Consider this the extreme beta version of Humans of New York: artist Jason Polan is on a mission to draw every single person in New York, and is already 30,000 deep, according to CityLab, which spoke with Polan this week. Those first sketches have been collected in the aptly-titled book Every Person in New York, chronicli

What book represents your neighborhood? There's a map for that (NYPL via Gothamist)

Yeesh: this $30k/month Brooklyn Heights townhouse might be the borough's most expensive rental (Brownstoner)

As New York nervously prepares itself for the possibility of another super-storm like Sandy, residents of waterfront neighborhoods have already been hit with rising federal flood insurance rates, as well as costly upgrades to help storm-proof their homes. As FEMA's new, expanded flood zone map heads towards the approval process, 400,000 more New Yorkers could find themselves suddenly located in a potential danger zone, fa

Dear Sam: The landlord of our rent-stabilized building keeps lowering our water pressure--you have to flush the toilet up to 10 times to get it to work, and lately, the pressure has been reduced in the shower, too. (Standing in the rain would be more effective.) Is this a common problem in buildings, and can I get a city inspector to come by and investigate unannounced? What should I do?