Spring has finally sprung. Well, almost. And to kick it off, we’ve once again picked out our favorite and most popular posts from LifeStyler and some other intriguing blogs and websites ’round the web for our March Monthly Mashup.

If you’ve been keeping a keen eye pegged on our Neighborhood Watch series (Lifestyler’s guide to the various residential areas of the city), you’ve no doubt noticed a trend. The first three installments–Bed-Stuy, Ditmas Park, Midwood–are all Brooklyn neighborhoods, which should come as no surprise as 3/4 of the staff hail from the county of Kings.

But we’re an open-minded lot, so we’ve decided to take a gander at our sister borough, Queens–Astoria in particular. Keeping tradition, we’ve tapped the mind of a fellow New York City-based blogger–Brian Heater, the mastermind behind the The Daily Cross Hatch, a wonderful indie comics blog–for the ins and outs of the place he calls home.

It would be an understatement to say that New York City’s real estate market is a maze. With too few available rentals and a surplus of fresh transplants, finding a home of your own can be more than a little bit daunting. We asked Joey Arak, Senior Editor of Curbed.com, for some advice on how to navigate the intricacies of the New York City market and his thoughts on the future of real estate in New York.

Renting an apartment, especially in New York, can be an enormous headache. Lots of people fall into the trap of getting a job and seriously overestimating what they can afford to spend on rent each month. When I first moved to New York, I lived in a pretty spacious (at least by New York standards) one bedroom in Washington Heights. The rent was $850. My salary was 26K. How did I do it? By using almost all of my paycheck to pay my rent, and paying utilities, food and other random bills with credit cards. A big no-no.