Chelsea. The West Village. The Castro. South Beach. These are some of the priciest neighborhoods in the country.
They were also once the nation’s most prominent gayborhoods. These trendy, high priced neighborhoods were built in large part by gays and lesbians (with a heavy emphasis on gay men) who were unmarried, mostly single and without children; more adventurous than their straight counterparts; in need of their own territory; and thus willing to go into an architecturally promising area that might be considered sketchy or simply desolate and make it their own.
The unintended result is family-friendly flipped neighborhoods with skyrocketing real estate values.