THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

You know you're a true New Yorker when you start having that reoccurring dream most NYC apartment dwellers have. No, rude tourists aren't bursting into flames, it's even better!

You are rattling around your small apartment, when suddenly you see a familiar door... Maybe you always assumed that the door was to a cupboard or a brick wall, but you honestly can't remember... So you open the door and- lo and behold!- there is a huge room with sunshine streaming through the windows, chirping birds, an indoor fountain with shiny leaping fish... And every single one of those beautiful, thousands of square feet is yours! And Dorothy, it was yours all along, you just didn't know it...

But according to New York Magazine, Amanda Maisel actually lived out this NYC apartment fantasy while roaming around her family home one afternoon:

"It's kind of in the mezzanine between the first and second floors.[...] It's a cool little room. I don't know why they don't use it. It is just kind of full of pieces of mirror."

So no fountain and leaping fish, but still - a whole found room she never knew existed! But then, why would she when the home she shares with only her parents is a 72-room, 35,000 square foot, former bank on the Lower East Side.

Dry heaving with fits of NYC real estate envy yet? Better keep that brown paper bag close: the owner, photographer Jay Maisel, paid only $102, 000 for the six-story building when he purchased it in 1966. Deep breaths - deep, deep breaths...

On the bright side - in that NYC real estate schadenfreude kinda way-it was years before Maisel had the luxury of taking deep breaths in his own home in which filth seemed to be an ever-renewing and abundant resource:

"I had to shovel sh*t against the tide. [...] Every single thing that can come out of a human body has been left on my doorstep. But it was more disgusting than dangerous."

Eeeeew... But while his trial by excrement may have ended, he's still battles vandals. Since the 1898 building was granted landmark status in 2002, Maisel must stay now one step ahead of the "gaffiti police."

Still, small price to pay. NYC real estate brokers estimate Maisel's 72-room home is now worth anywhere from $30 to $70 million. And that only includes the rooms they know about.

STARS! Too Close For Comfort....

Pests Out-of-Control
They're so tiny, but an infestation can destroy the peace and quiet NYC neighborhood within seconds! The Olsen twins voracious appetite to be seen trying not to be seen has consumed the patience of residents of the Greenwich Village brownstone they rent the top two floors of. Says one itchy resident who was removed from her own stoop so the twins could go through the front door privately, "They are disruptive, intrusive, and totally disrespectful!" Secondary infestations of goons, idling SUVs, other "spoiled brats", and the idiots who love them have spread up and down West 13th Street. Eeeew! [NYPost]

Joke's On Them!
Whoever rents Heath Leger's NYC apartment next will be paying $26,000. a month, $4000. more per month than the late actor paid for the SoHo. Then again, Leger only lived there until January 2008, and that was before luxury apartment had become the scene of a talented young star's all too early demise. [NYSun]

Meet the Parents!
In the elevator! In the laundry room! Every gosh darn time you set foot outside of your $10,000,000. luxury co-op! That's what Ben Stiller gets for purchasing his NYC apartment in his parents' Upper West Side building. Maybe Ann Zabar, the apartment's previous tenant, left the fridge stocked well enough that he won't have to go outside for a while. [NYSun]

Dome Home
Is it any wonder that the unusually high-foreheaded fashion mogul, Tommy Hilfiger feels at home in domes? Hilfiger's trading in his $50,000 for his luxury apartment in the Plaza for a 6000 square foot property inside the dome of another Central Park adjacent condo building. That's a lot of headroom! [Curbed]