To Buy or Rent

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/05/upshot/four-not-so-obvious-things-to-consider-when-deciding-to-buy-or-rent.html?_r=0

Today's NYTimes had an excellent article on whether to buy or rent.
The article discusses such diverse issues as rising rents, rent regulation, tax benefits and liabilities, forced savings, and the physical maintenance of the property.
Well done.
The one thing not discussed, however, is that in NYC, whether you buy or rent, 9 times out of 10 you are buying or renting an apartment.
Now, your apartment might be as large as an Olympic swimming pool and you might have a doorman, indoor gym and a skeet shooting range in your living room, but it is still an apartment.
Why should that matter?
I don't think Sartre ever sold real estate, but he nailed it when he said  (sorta'), 'hell is people.'  (OK, he did not literally say it....go read  "No Exit.")
I moved out of NYC in the year 2000.  I went from living in a co-op to a private home.
Do I love the commute?  No. Do I enjoy cutting hedges and mowing a yard?  Of course not.
The one thing I don't miss is having people above me, below me or on either side of me.
Over the years, as a more or less person, and as an attorney practicing in the area of real estate law, I have encountered neighbors who:
Kept a pit bull in the communal laundry room;
Turned their apartment into an S&M dungeon (and no, I don't remember the address);
Walked around the hallways undressed (and no, I don't remember the address);
Sat on the stoop drinking beer (only one person gets to do this at my house);
Stabbed someone;
Threw cinderblocks off the roof;
Turned their apartment into the weight room of a gym;
Threw someone down a flight of stairs;
Turned their apartment into a disco.

All true, sadly true, completely true.

If you can do it, run, do not walk, to the nearest one family house you can buy.  Well, I suppose, you can rent it too.