50 Shades of Grey: Real estate edition

By Lucy Cohen Blatter | March 9, 2015 - 12:29PM

You need to get pretty creative to afford the painful rents in this city. So when Jennifer P.'s roommate moved out of their 1,750-square foot (!) Park Slope apartment, she decided that instead of looking for someone else to divvy up the rent (which was $1,800 a month at the time), she started leasing out one of the rooms to BDSM—that's bondage, domination, sadism and masochism—types in need of a dungeon.

Jennifer (not her real name, obvs), tells Brooklyn Based that the business allows her to keep her gig as a freelance cartoonist and writer. Christian Grey wannabes pay between $150 and $250 per session, and she takes 40 percent, earning just under $3,000 a month. And, yes, just like that other short-term rental business model, Airbnb, we're pretty sure this is illegal. (Though it should be noted that the room isn't used for sex, so the services performed there can't be considered prostitution).

Honestly, the most shocking part of this story to us is not the BDSM stuff—live and let live—but the fact that her current rent for the three-bedroom in pricey Park Slope is just $2,100 a month.

Deep-pocketed types on the hunt for a permanent abode with kinky cinematic history can have this instead: the penthouse apartment featured in the steamy (and, yes, misogynistic) "9 1/2 Weeks" is for sale for $4.3 million.

And those who just want to dabble in BDSM in warmer climes can visit this fetish club/dungeon in Miami that's run by "a very experienced loving, emotional well balanced lifestyle BDSM couple," according to their Craigslist ad. Any takers?

My Upper West Side neighbors? A prostitution ring

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