A Little Bit Lauer Now ...

If, like us, the only paper you've had a look at over the weekend is the Bangor Daily News, (our favorite vacation paper!) The Real Estate is happy to oblige you here with a round-up of the weekend's real-estate coverage. The Times has already pumped up the South Bronx as the new real estate hot-spot. (Write in if you know any Times editors who live there!) This week they bring unlikely word of a housing boom in ... East New York! We learn about a couple who ignored pleas to leave the neighborhood, and instead watched their house rise in price from $62,000 in 1987 to a current appraisal of $350,000. That's significant, since the Times is fond of reporting that you can't find a decent apartment in this town for under $400,000. The City Section's Coping column (incidentally, we've always wondered: Coping? I'd rather read something called Kvetching) takes up a defense of Murray Hell, as we dubbed the neighborhood in a recent article by Lizzy Ratner (registration required!), and its beer-swilling, heel-clicking post-Ann Arbor Fraternity Row set, under the headline "Dull is Beautiful." We wonder whether the City Section doesn't have lots of reasons to endorse that sentiment. In the Post, Braden Keil finds recent bachelor Matt Lauer and ad-guy Donny Deutsch both renting at Trump Park Avenue (several floors apart). New York Magazine looks at how rising prices have created a most unwelcome trend: too many brokers! Also, more Matt Lauer real-estate gossip. Is there a reconciliation in the works? - Michael Calderone