For Sale

Lesley Blume has a great piece over at Slate about the European invasion in the NY real estate market:

...But six months later, the joke is wearing thin. Despite some rah-rah rallying this week in response to a pep talk from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the dollar has fallen 11.5 percent against the euro and 7.2 percent versus the yen since September 2007, and it continues to limp along.

So the European conquest proceeds. Realtors partially credit the strength of the Manhattan residential real estate market to foreign investment. Jim Gricar, executive vice president and director of sales at Brown Harris Stevens, estimates that such purchases may have spiked 15 percent recently (others have placed the estimate as high as 25 percent). In the ultimate gesture of pragmatism, some American women are reportedly paying as much as $6,000 a year for membership to dating services that introduce them to British men.