Real Estate for the Afterlife - The New York Times
Apr 5, 2019Prices for the last piece of real estate that any New Yorker will ever own — a cemetery plot or an aboveground crypt — have also climbed significantly over the years.Basic cemetery plots across the five boroughs now generally cost $4,500 to $19,000, not including hefty fees for foundations, interments and maintenance. The best deals can be found on Staten Island, where a grave site can be had for less than $3,000, but an increasingly rare final resting place in Manhattan can go for $1 million.But wherever you go, you won’t actually own the land. When you buy a burial spot, you’re just acquiring the right to use the space in perpetuity — not unlike the shares you get when you buy in a co-op building and live in an apartment that you don’t technically own.While cemetery directors long ago warned that the city would soon run out of burial space, they, like their counterparts in other types of real estate development, have found ingenious ways to carve out new space in already crowded environments. In fact, there may be enough cemetery plots left in the city to last for several more decades, even in historic sites like Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn and Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.The growing popularity of cremation has helped ease the demand. While consumers have turned to cremation for many reasons, an urn with cremated remains — or cremains, as the funeral industry refers to them — takes up far less space than a coffin. An in-ground plot for cremains at Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn is only two square feet and starts at $1,200.Space, of course, was less of an issue 150 years ago.When Tammany Hall politician Boss Tweed died in 1878, he and his family had already bought two large plots at Green-Wood that were combined to accommodate one and all. Mr. Tweed’s final abode is 600 square feet and enclosed by a low granite wall with a bronze gate. His monument stands at the center, surrounded by other monuments and headstones for his father, his wife and children, and assorted relatives — with plenty of room to spare...
