In N.Y., a man's home is his itty-bitty castle

NEW YORK — The real-estate ad warned, "Think Treehouse or Cruise Ship Cabin," but the size of the apartment — 160 square feet — still looked like a misprint.

It wasn't.

Barely twice the size of a death-row prison cell, the itty-bitty studio on Perry Street in the West Village just might be the smallest co-op for sale in Manhattan.

It has a twin bed built into the wall, with a cubbyhole at the foot for a small television, a speck of a kitchenette and room left over for a chair.

It also has a buyer.

Even with a price tag of $135,000, it didn't take long for the real-estate company Corcoran Group to find someone who would skimp big time on space for a prime spot.

"There were people who looked at it and said, 'Next!' " said broker Luke Evans.

"But the building is the epitome of location, location, location."

In the other boroughs, $150,000 will buy a nice-size one-bedroom apartment, but in Manhattan, the average price for a studio is more than $250,000. So home hunters otherwise priced out of the market are snapping up apartments that would fit inside the master-suite closet at Trump World Tower.

• An East 30th Street studio with a 16-by-10-foot living area and a small separate kitchen recently went for $165,000.

• A 250-square-foot apartment on Lexington Avenue, a half-block from Gramercy Park, is going for $167,500.

• A 240-square-foot second-floor walkup on West 10th Street is generating interest at $179,900.

Alex Gray, 23, paid $130,000 for a 220-square-foot Chelsea studio. He thinks he got a great deal but admitted it's a tight squeeze.

"My television is in the fireplace," he said.

The ad-agency worker, a transplant from Los Angeles, traded in a big one-bedroom rental for his new place. It required some adjustment.

"It was sort of a Zen-like cleansing experience," he said. "Things were a little claustrophobic at first."

Corcoran Chief Executive Pam Liebman said the mini-studios are good investments because they're cheaper than renting and likely will go up in value.

"Yes, you sleep in the same room you work in and entertain in, and you tend not to have many guests unless they're very skinny or very close to you," she added. "But it's owning a piece of Manhattan."

That's exactly how Lisa Iapicco, 41, saw it.

After 15 years of commuting from New Jersey, she moved to the city, at first renting a one-bedroom apartment on the upper East Side for $1,800 a month.

When she decided to buy, she paid $136,500 for a fifth-floor unit in a building with a doorman and an elevator. It had an 11-by-17 main room, including a kitchenette with a hotplate but no stove, and the bathroom was a decent 5 by 7 feet.

Between the $774 mortgage and maintenance fee of $383, her monthly outlay is less than $1,200.

She's building a Murphy bed unit to double as a desk and closet, and installing an 18-inch dishwasher and half-stove.

"I can deal with this until I can afford my dream apartment in New York City," she said.

It's not for everyone, though.

Sandor Polster, a Maine journalism professor looking for a crash pad in Manhattan, rejected a bunch of hideaways before finding a 350-square-foot place on the West Side — including one that was around 260 square feet and was going for $95,000.

When he got inside, he realized why.

"It had a bathroom that I joked was smaller than an airplane bathroom, with a folding door and a shower stall that you couldn't turn around in," he said.

A 250-square-foot smidgen of a studio in a doorman building near Lincoln Center — which broker Daniella Schlisser acknowledged "needs renovation" and "does not show well" — sold for $139,000.

The buyer was a woman who wants it for her daughter, who will be a freshman at a nearby college starting in September.

"The mother is a cabinet designer, so she was able to see past what's there and envision what it could look like," Schlisser said.