Belowground apartments in New York City conjure up images of Rosalind
Russell’s view of moving feet in the hugely popular fi lm My Sister Eileen and
the musical version of Wonderful Town, or Audrey Hepburn’s stylish apartment in
the thriller Wait Until Dark, all set in Greenwich Village.
In the real world, most belowground apartments today are to be found in
Brooklyn and Queens—many of them illegal carve-outs of cellars in private homes.
When public schoolteacher Steve Sparling arrived in New York from Nebraska, he
moved into a tiny studio on a Sunset Park side street with no windows in the
main room. He found out later that the broker had lied to him about the unit’s
legality.
That was after he suffered raw sewage several inches deep, periodic flooding,
and run-ins with the landlord, whose family lived upstairs. “It was worse than
awful,” he said. “It was so wrong on every level. There’s a reason they’re
illegal. It was a fi retrap.” Even so, the $650 monthly rent allowed him to save
enough money to buy an apartment in Jackson Heights. Experiences like Sparling’s
aren’t uncommon in a city so squeezed for space.
Many units in private homes are, in fact, built according to city code. And
new and renovated apartment buildings are also offering belowground space,
usually as half of a duplex, known as a townhouse or, with a private street
entrance, a maisonette. The advantages often include a lower price per square
foot, a separate street entrance, greater privacy, and a private garden or
patio. Such spaces have become especially common in Greenpoint and Williamsburg.
“A lot of the boutique buildings have ground-fl oor apartments with basement
spaces,” said Dave Kazemi, a broker for Bond New York. He has sold several such
units in Greenpoint in new developments that include 185 India Street, 216 and
218 Eckford Street, and 137 Java Street, all with private yards. If there’s a
deal breaker, it’s usually the amount of natural light.
“Some are like dungeons,” Kazemi said, “and some get lots of light.” Some
people actually prefer these setups because they can rent the downstairs half.
Also, as Kazemi pointed out, “In two-bedrooms units, the bedrooms are right next
to each other.”
In a duplex, the bedrooms can be on different fl oors, offering greater
privacy for people with young kids or roommates. Roberto Gonzalez, a broker for
Bond New York, has a client who just closed on a duplex in the Aqua, across from
McCarren Pool in Williamsburg.
She’s renting the downstairs area to a friend, who will share the upstairs
kitchen. The buyer, newly arrived in the city, hadn’t originally considered such
an apartment but was wooed by the price differential. Gene Simonetti, a broker
with DJK Residential, also sells in Greenpoint and has lived in a belowground
apartment.
He has renovated duplex apartments in Sheepshead Bay that he’s offering “in
the low $500s” for 1,200 and 1,700 square feet—well below comparable aboveground
apartments. Night owls are welcome. “Some people like to sleep in,” Simonetti
said. “It’s cozy, and there’s nobody underneath you. Plus, it’s cost-effective.”
