21 South End Avenue, #227 - $899,000 - 1,050 sq ft

We have to admit that we have never liked the "yacht club" feel of 21 South End Avenue, with the odd wood and blue trim everywhere (including the hallways and the interior of many apartments). The listing for #227 looked really promising however on Streeteasy and as we are HUGE suckers for outdoor space, we were very much looking forward to seeing the enormous balcony/patio, which we thought looked kind of serene in the pictures with Hudson River views.

In reality, this unit is kind of hit or miss. On the "hit" side, we love the real staircase which compares quite favorably to the 1BR with a ladder that we saw two weeks ago in the East Village and the 1BR with a 6 inch chute spiral staircase that we saw around the same time. Additionally, the outdoor space in this unit is quite large (as advertised) and the upstairs bedroom floor fills the entire space so there is no "down to below" hole in this apartment unlike many other duplexes that we've seen.

On the "miss" side, the outdoor space basically looks on to the building across the street and not the Hudson River, which certainly makes it less serene. Also the kitchen is quite small and awkwardly laid out in a nook next to the living room. Everything in the apartment also looks quite dated (we can't tell if it's the yacht club color scheme or something else) and the maintenance/taxes are bordering on unmanageable at almost $2500 per month for essentially 850 sq ft or so of indoor space. Another uh uh for us in BPC - perhaps we should go back to our Battery Park CILF.