The flâneur’s guide to NYC real estate

 Without a doubt the best way to get an eyeful of New York City’s real estate is by hoof. Despite our nearly unlimited online resources, brilliant algorithms and elegantly synthesized data, the journalist and academic William Helmreich from Norway argues that to get to know the city you have to walk it.

In his new book “The New York Nobody Knows: Walking 6,000 Miles in the City,” Helmreich delivers anecdote after anecdote regarding his amble down all of the five boroughs’ streets.

“New York is so varied,” Helmreich told the New York Times. “But if you don’t walk the streets, you never really understand that. Plus my philosophy is, everything’s interesting.”

In fact, Helmreich’s journey has given him such an encyclopedic perspective on the city that friends in the real estate business constantly ask for tips about the next up-and-coming neighborhood, or hidden prime properties.

Helmreich recommends the Lower Grand Concourse in the Bronx and Prospect-Lefferts Gardens in Brooklyn. [NYT] –Christopher Cameron