NYC or Bust!

I started this post long ago…. as we have said we made it, but it has been crazy so we haven’t had time to write. But here is the post of our apartment search.

So Maz and I were in NYC last week hunting for apartment. After days of checking adds, calling, seeing places, and e-mailing people we finally found a place. I will admit that this week was probably one of the most stressful weeks I have ever had; surprisingly I only broke down in tears once. When we first arrived in NYC I was pretty confident about finding an apartment. I didn’t think it could be that hard. I figured if millions of other people had done it, so could we.

So on Sunday Maz and I went to check out a few places we saw listed on Craigslist. One of the places we checked out was in Sunset Park. The place was $1150 and consisted of a bedroom and an eat in kitchen. It was also in the basement of a Brownstone. Not too bad, but I figured that we should look some more, especially since the price was towards the high end of our budget. For the rest of the day Sunday we walked around Brooklyn and checked out a few neighborhoods (Bay Ridge, Crown Heights, Bedford). At the end of the day we went back to our hostel (more on the hostel in another post) to check listings and figure out who we should call the next day.

In the morning on Monday we called a few brokers only to be told that they had no one bedroom apartments in our price range. This amazed me since on most of their websites they had places listed in our range. We did make appointments to see two places in Brooklyn. The first place was in Flatbush and the second one was on the boarder of Flatbush and Kensington. The first place was OK but pretty far from a subway stop. The second apartment was really nice. It had full sized kitchen appliance (something that seems to be rare in both Milwaukee and NYC). It also had a nice sized living room and bedroom AND it was only $950 a month. Not bad. I wasn’t too fond of the neighborhood so I wanted to wait until after Tuesday when we were supposed to meet with a broker in Queens.

On Tuesday we went to meet the broker at Metropolis Realty. We spent an hour getting to their office only to be told that they had nothing in our price range. Since we actually had a scheduled appointment with them and they knew what we were looking for you would think that they would have called to tell us that they didn’t have anything. No instead they made us waste our entire morning!!! After this we went to Starbucks to get coffee and figure out what to do next. This is the one time a actually broke down in tears. I was so frustrated with the whole ordeal. We set up an RSS feed through netvibes Maz’s to phone that would show us new Craigslist postings, but nothing was coming in, the brokers had nothing, and the only prospective apartment was in a neighborhood that I still didn’t know if I felt comfortable in. Finally a few brokers who we had contracted the day before started returning calls, unfortunately none of them had anything. We started to head back to the hostel to grab our computers and go somewhere to get coffee and use the internet. Finally we got a call from a person at First Executive Realty who said they had some places in our price range. Great!!! We set up an appointment for the next morning. In the late afternoon we went to our appointment with Vertical City Realty. They actually had apartments in our range!!! We went with the broker and looked at two different apartments. The first one had a bedroom that was the size of a closet and a tiny living room. The next one was a bit bigger, but a bit out of our price range.

We started to head back to the hostel to grab our computers and go somewhere to get coffee and use the internet.

When we got to First Executive’s offices on Wednesday morning they told us that they didn’t have any one bedrooms in our price range (WTF!!!), but they did have a studio for $1000 if we wanted to look at it. So we figured why not… we hadn’t looked at any studios at this point. So we went with the broker (who luckily drove since my feet hurt bad at this point). It was small…. way small, like 12 by 15 feet, but at least it was an apartment.

So after looking at the small place, we headed to a Starbucks is the neighborhood and started filling out the application for the apartment in Brooklyn. I figured $950 for a nice-sized place…. I would get used to the neighborhood. While we were filling out the applications First Executive called and said that if we wanted the studio we could have it. I told them that there was a one bedroom in Brooklyn that we were considering, that at the time we preferred. The broker told me that he would hold the studio until Thursday morning and no longer. WOW!!! From what I understand, it is unheard of for a broker to hold an apartment for you….

We spent about 2 hours filling out the applications for the place in Brooklyn. There was one application for the broker and a separate one for the property owner. Once we finished filling out the applications and putting together all the necessary informatin (tax returns, w2’s, bank statements, credit reports, pay stubs, letters of recommendation etc.) we spent about $60 to fax everything to the broker and to the owner. Then we had some time to relax…. we figured at least we had the studio to fall back on if the one bedroom fell through.

Later Wednesday night I get a call from the broker for the one bedroom… he said that since my parents were going to guarantee they needed each of them to fill out an application and fax over all of their information. Yeah right. considering my parents were currently at work, how was I supposed to get them to gather all of their info, fill out the application, and fax it back to NY ASAP. Also this would only mean that we would have a chance at getting the apartment. At this point we decided to forget it and just take the studio apartment. So here it is….

The apartment is actually is a really nice neighborhood and only 1/2 block from the subway!

Here’s the livingroom/bedroom. It’s about 12X16 feet. Maybe a bit more…

Our new “kitchen”. Not really a kitchen, but it will work.

And the bathroom. At least it is a decent size and has a bathtub!

So we signed the lease for a year and received the keys Friday morning. It felt really good to go home to Milwaukee with the keys to our NYC apartment in hand!!!

Total Cost:

$2000 security (double the normal since we did not have jobs in NYC)

$1000 first months rent

$1500 brokers fee (something close to 1500, I can’t remember the exact amount)

So we did it! We have an apartment and we did it with a day to spare!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 12:54 pm and is filed under Insights, NYC, Pre-move, apartment . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.