Location wise, we are in a decent area. While our immediate neighborhood is pretty quiet and doesn’t not have a whole lot going on, we are close to a lot. Being in Western Queens give us easy access to Manhattan and we are within 10 – 15 blocks of everything we need. Our place is less than a block from the subway — it doesn’t get much better than that.

We like our building. All of the people who live there (at least those we have met) are friendly. For the most part it is quiet at night so we can actually sleep. Well, except for the lady who live above us who rearranges her furniture at least 3 nights a week at like 1 am.

On the downside our place in tiny. We really had to adjust from living in our seemingly huge apartment in Milwaukee, to something the size of a closet. I never thought I would be sleeping in a lofted bed and have to use a step ladder to go to bed when I was this age. I guess that is the price you pay to live in NYC.

Overall we have decided to stay where we are for another year. We really do not have the time or the patience to go out and look for a new place and then have to deal with the whole broker, broker fee, security deposit, first months rent thing again. Not to mention having to figure out the logistics of moving all of our stuff when we do not have a vehicle…

At this point I am just hoping a bigger apartment in our building opens up sometime soon. It would be so nice to actually have a bedroom, kitchen and a living room again instead of a bedlivkitroom!

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!

I have also decided to sell most of what I own at a garage sale in August before we leave for New York. Most of the stuff I own I don’t really need. I still want most of it, but do not need it.. It is really hard to go through all of your things and put prices on it all (especially when the price tags are for a dollar or a quarter). I guess if I can make an extra couple hundred dollars it will be worth it.

The most exciting thing that happened recently was a job interview. I had an interview with a major policy research institute about a week ago. The interview was by phone and I should be hearing in about a week if they want to fly me out for an in-person interview…. keep your fingers crossed for me.

Other than that I have been busy getting together everything we are going to need to find an apartment: bank statements, credit reports, reference letters… Now if only we could find a way to be positive we will find a place in August. My goal is to sign a lease while we are there in August and move in sometime around September 15th. We are still struggling with whether or not to use a broker. I like the idea of just finding a place on our own, but I don’t know how possible that will be…

We purchased our flight to NYC from JetBlue. The airfare was reasonably cheap. The plan is to stay in a hostel while we are in NYC. I’ve been looking at JazzHostels as a possible place to stay. We want to save as much of our cash for actually moving out there as possible. I’m hoping that the hostels in New York don’t suck, as I’ve never been. I’ll let everybody know how the discount airline and the hostel stays went in future posts. It will be an adventure, thats for sure.

For the most part I believe we’ll be looking for apartments somewhere in Brooklyn or Long Island City. I am looking forward to exploring a couple of neighborhoods while we are out there in August. Access to public transportation will be an important factor in our decision. Most bang for the buck is also a high priority. We are considering paying a fee for some listings of apartments. We’ve looked at ads in the Village Voice that appear reasonable so we’ll see about that in the next couple weeks as well.

For my own job hunt I’m hoping to set up an interview or 2 with some IT consulting recruiters or headhunters. If I can schedule an interview with a direct company or non-profit as well that would be extra awesome. At this point from some of the research I’ve done I’m fairly confident in my ability to find a job. Work has been really slow in Milwaukee the past few summers, so I’ll be looking forward to the extended gig options that will come with NYC.

We will keep you updated as the plot thickens….

Compared to Milwaukee there are many more job opportunities in NYC. While this makes me optimistic I realize that there are also a lot more people applying for jobs in New York than there are in Milwaukee. I have been using a few different job search sites to hunt for jobs, unfortunately most of the sites out there seems to be geared to computer or other technology based careers. Some that have been useful to me are idealist.com and philanthropycareers.com. These sights offer a broader range of careers than sites like monster.com.

Idealist.org is especially useful because you can search by job category and area of focus rather than having to choose from a narrow range of job categories like some other sites force you to do. In addition to searching for jobs on idealist.org it is an excellent resource for networking in the non-profit world. You can search for people with similar interests or for organizations in the area. This is particularly nice since I am trying to find some non-profits to do some volunteer work with. This site allows me to search for the National organizations by area of focus and then provides links to the local chapters’ website. It also let you subscribe to an RSS feed to keep you updated on any changes or new matches within your search!

So while I am finding a decent number of jobs to apply for, it is hard to hunt for jobs in a city where you do not live (or live any where near for that matter). Ideally I will find a job that will start in either at the end September or the beginning of October and we will find an apartment with a lease that starts at the beginning of September. I guess one of the hardest parts of this move is trying to coordinate the timing or everything. I do not want to find a job that starts before we move to New York, but I also don’t want to find an apartment that is available too soon…