Yesterday, my coworker showed me photos from the house that his parents bought as their retirement home. This sprawling four-bedroom, five-bath house in Arizona was going to cost them in the ballpark range of $550,000. As I marveled over the photos of the gorgeous interior as well as the grounds, I joked out loud that this same dollar amount couldn’t even get us a  one-bedroom condo in Manhattan. In New York City, unless you are living way out in an outer borough, you pay a premium for small square footage. Some “bedrooms” here would literally be considered closets in another city, yet they’d go for three to five times the rent. Choosing to live here means a compromise in space and value to the extreme.