Living in New York

MarieG

MarieG

Platinum Member
O.G.
Jun 9, 2006
6,312
44
#1
Hi,
I was wondering if anyone has any advice concerning finding an apartment in Manhattan, New York as I will be moving there in September for six months. I have already tried craigslist and am also considering roommates.com. Does anyone have any experience and can tell me how they found a good place and how much rent is etc... I would really appreciate any help!:yes:
Thanks!!
 
#3
Well as a newbie to NYC I can help you out!!! first, rent is very expensive- that is a given. Second, do you need it furnished? What kind of price range are you thinking about??

Feel free to PM me for some help! You will love it here!
 
#4
If it's only 6 months, you probably want to sublet a furnished apartment. They're pretty easy to find here; I would recommend a google search for agencies that specialize in that. I know there are several but I dont have any specific recommendations, sorry.

As for rents, they can range from $1000 to tens of thousands. I would say you could probably find a decent studio around $1800/month.
 
#5
^ A nice furnished sublet for $1800?? Not through a broker... a studio from a broker firm will range around $2500-$6000 for what the broker calls 'nice' studio. You will pay a broker fee (1 months rent) plus application fee and processing fee... kinda crazy :hysteric:

I'd still look at craigslist- you can find some great stuff there!
 
#6
MarieG said:
Hi,
I was wondering if anyone has any advice concerning finding an apartment in Manhattan, New York as I will be moving there in September for six months. I have already tried craigslist and am also considering roommates.com. Does anyone have any experience and can tell me how they found a good place and how much rent is etc... I would really appreciate any help!:yes:
Thanks!!
Click to expand...
'


first you'll need to strike oil somewhere. then you can look at rents. J/K, kind of. there are alot of ladies here from NY. I'm sure they can help. Love NYC by the way. You're gonna love it.
 
#7
Megs said:
^ A nice furnished sublet for $1800?? Not through a broker... a studio from a broker firm will range around $2500-$6000 for what the broker calls 'nice' studio. You will pay a broker fee (1 months rent) plus application fee and processing fee... kinda crazy :hysteric:

I'd still look at craigslist- you can find some great stuff there!
Click to expand...

I've never heard of a $6K studio! Well, maybe in the Pierre!:wtf:

I wouldn't suggest paying a broker's fee (12-15% of your annual rent) for a 6 month sublet. There are a lot of sites that connect sublet seekers with people who have apartments for short-term stays for no fee. You can definitely find one for under $2K in a clean, safe non-doorman building in a decent area. It will probably be about 400 sq. feet but that's part of the NYC experience! Good luck!
 
#8
manolo maven said:
I've never heard of a $6K studio! Well, maybe in the Pierre!:wtf:

I wouldn't suggest paying a broker's fee (12-15% of your annual rent) for a 6 month sublet. There are a lot of sites that connect sublet seekers with people who have apartments for short-term stays for no fee. You can definitely find one for under $2K in a clean, safe non-doorman building in a decent area. It will probably be about 400 sq. feet but that's part of the NYC experience! Good luck!
Click to expand...

No joke!!! I nearly died when I was looking...!!! I called so many places and it was like a joke... for 2 months they told me I could get a studio for $12,115?!?!?!
 
#9
Jeez, I thought my 3BR was expensive!!

I know when I was working I had colleagues from overseas staying at places like The Bristol and Miranmar (something like that) -- both exectuive housing buildings -- and yeah, the rents were INSANE. More like hotel rates than regular renting rates. I guess they know it's big companies footing the bill.

What part of town do you live in? I'm on the upper east side.
 
#10
I live in NYC--have for most of my life--the prices are high.--A friend of mine who may get evicted just started looking and was quoted $2K for a studio by his realtor friend. I guess to get one for 2K the realtor has to be your friend! A lot of people do share. There was an article in the Times about a woman uptown who puts together rental share in these oversized apartments uptown. You end up sharing, but its with other young people and you have your own room. She's calling it urban dorms. She tries to match people and the whole building is young people starting out, which at a certain age can potentially be a lot of fun. This is the article. I don't want to get the forum in trouble for copyright violation, so if a mod wants to edit and remove this, the link is
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/nyregion/13dorms.html?ei=5070&en=dc8280ae80acd322&ex=1153713600&pagewanted=print
but you'll have to register to access it.

Here's the article if you want to explore this:
July 13, 2006
Out of College, but Now Living in Urban Dorms

By JANNY SCOTT
Kelly Frances Cook is an editorial assistant, Ivy League graduate, aspiring writer — the kind of new arrival who has long been important to the life of New York City. Young, educated and hailing from elsewhere, newcomers like Ms. Cook have historically stoked the city’s intellectual and creative fires. But, these days, how do they afford a place to live?
Ms. Cook, age 24 and from Ohio, at first could afford only a rented room in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., for $650 a month. Then she embarked on the archetypal, hair-raising New York City apartment search: feckless would-be roommates, outlandish financial demands, an offer of a room in a building with a bullet-pocked lobby.
Then she saw an ad on Craigslist for space in a 60-unit building in Harlem described as full of young professionals. The price was right; the woman on the phone was friendly. Back in Ohio, Ms. Cook’s mother had begun to think like a New Yorker: “Yeah, right, Kelly. She’s probably some mass murderer. I don’t trust her. She’s too nice.”
This month, Ms. Cook is moving in. The woman on the phone, Karen Falcon (not a mass murderer), calls the building “a dorm for adults.” It is a community of the overeducated and underpaid.
There is nothing new about having roommates in New York City. What Ms. Falcon has invented is a full-service dorm, full of strangers she has brought together to share big apartments as a way to keep housing costs down. Her approach is a homegrown response to the soaring rents bedeviling desirable cities like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Ms. Falcon, an informal agent for the building’s owner, says she has placed nearly 150 young people there and in two other buildings in the neighborhood in recent years. A gregarious Californian with rainbow-colored braids, she pieces together roommate groups like puzzles. Each tenant ends up paying $700 to $1,200 a month.
Ms. Falcon says she screens for a combination of good credit ratings and “sweetness,” looking for people who are respectful, considerate and easygoing (and perhaps have a co-signer).
She mixes genders; all-female groups bring too much high drama, all-male groups make too much of a mess. She has matched Ph.D.’s with Ph.D.’s. If the combination is a disaster, she will arrange for a swap. Anyone can leave before the lease is up as long as Ms. Falcon can find a replacement.
She says the tenants she has placed in the three buildings have included chefs, actors, writers, people in publishing, a woman in public relations, a production manager, an accountant, a paralegal, a program officer for a foundation. There have also been plenty of graduate students and students from abroad.
“Our neighborhood is one of the last neighborhoods left in New York where you have these big old Beaux-Arts buildings, built for wealthy families,” Ms. Falcon said, referring to the stretch of Harlem from 145th to 155th Streets near the Hudson River. She said groups of adults, each contributing, pay rents that families cannot or choose not to pay.
New York City has long been a magnet for the young, well educated and ambitious. According to a report published by the Census Bureau in 2003, nearly 132,500 young, single, college-educated people poured into the New York metropolitan area between 1995 and 2000, more than into any other metropolitan area in the United States.
“Sometimes we underestimate how important that is in generating the city’s creativity,” said Frank Braconi, chief economist for the city comptroller’s office. “To the degree that housing costs become a barrier to that group, it can in the long run sap us of that creative potential that we would otherwise have.”
Brad Lander, director of the Pratt Center for Community Development, a nonprofit group, said young professionals get less attention than other financially struggling groups because they are more mobile and have options. Though they, too, are wrestling with the city’s shortage of lower-cost housing, they are seen as harbingers of gentrification.
Mr. Lander said a well-known strategy among landlords of buildings with rents regulated by the city is to seek out tenants who they imagine will not stay long, because they can often increase the rent when a tenant leaves. “Students as well as professionals,” he said. “Plenty of landlords find this group an attractive set of folks to rent to, believing they’ll be out in a couple of years.”
Marieke Bianchi, 23, a junior account executive at a public relations firm in the Flatiron district, moved to New York from St. Louis last year after graduating from college. She started out on a friend’s couch, then sublet for six weeks in Hell’s Kitchen, where she had to move a giant exercise bike to get into bed.
“I can’t believe it, a grown woman in a trundle bed,” she said with humorous disgust.
Ms. Bianchi, earning $25,000 a year at the time, found one of Ms. Falcon’s ads. Now she lives in a large room in a four-bedroom duplex apartment in a brownstone in Harlem. Her roommates are a bartender, a woman in information technology, an art historian, two dogs and two cats. Her rent is $900 a month.
Adult dorm living is not without its complexities.
Ms. Bianchi feels she should check first before inviting friends into the backyard, since they have to pass through another roommate’s space. And when one of her roommates brings anyone home for the night, Ms. Bianchi invariably knows. “It’s that level of intimacy from Day 1,” she said.
Like Ms. Bianchi, others ponder their next move.
Wil Fenn, a 29-year-old program officer for a foundation, has been trying since college to save money to buy a home. He lived in Westchester County for six years, in order to pay less rent. Then, last year, he became bored and decided to move into Manhattan. He, too, happened upon one of Ms. Falcon’s ads.
Now Mr. Fenn pays $850 a month for a large room in a four-bedroom apartment in what he describes as a beautiful building with exposed brick walls, mosaic tiles in the lobby and a garden on the roof. His roommates include a New York City teaching fellow, a chef and a German student studying in the United States on a Fulbright scholarship.
Ms. Falcon first placed Mr. Fenn in a two-bedroom apartment with a woman who he said worked for a large bond firm. One night, Mr. Fenn said, she had a fit after he left his mail on top of the microwave oven. It was downhill from there. So, at his request, Ms. Falcon moved him down to the four-bedroom apartment on the second floor.
“Everyone talks about free-market solutions,” he said, speaking of the city’s shortage of lower-priced housing. “But the solution now is the rich get richer and for everyone else it’s the equivalent of being a sharecropper in the city. I’ve been working five or six years now, trying to save up and buy something. Every time I get closer, the goal moves farther away.”
Asked how adult-dorm life differed from college-dorm life, Mr. Fenn said: “You’re not really at the same place where you were psychologically. Now, for me, I’m kind of wondering: When does this end? When do I get to be able to buy a place and settle down?”
 
#12
I used to live in the Chelsea Hotel on 23rd St. The rent was... ehhh... But I didnt have a year lease.. only lived there for ten months. It was 2 grand for a studio.. but I know there are a few that go for much less.. plus, they're furnished... and the location is pretty close to everything.

Try looking up info on the Chelsea Hotel... it's a historic building.. filled with crazy art.. Lots of students from FIT live there... Ethan Hawke's office or something was next to our apartment... He looks weird IRL... LOL

Give them a call.. ask for Stanley or his son. They run the place.
 
#13
if you are only going to be here for 6 months then I don't think you should spend all your $$$ on rent which is kind of hard to do anyway. Rent in Manhattan is robbery!! I've lived here 90% of my life and these prices are the most ridiculous I've ever seen.

Start looking for temp shares on Craigslist and the village voice. If those don't work out then get the help of an apartment share agency. If you are going to use an agency then make sure you check them out on BBB.org.
 
#14
No landlord will give you a lease for only 6 months, try subleting an apartment or even a room (I know it sounds crazy, but if location is that important to you, for eg the village). Be prepared to put 3 months or even 6 months rent down right away. If money is an issue, consider the outerboroughs such as Queens or Brooklyn. Forget about the Bronx or Staten island. Brooklyn Heights is one stop from Wall St, so it is the same price as Manhattan, prices in Park Slope, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Williamsburg, ******* Hill and DUMBO are more affordable and can actually give you a better sense of true New York. Manhattan gets very touristy, especially in the summer. You may also consider the other side of the island on the New Jersey side. Hoboken for eg, may be worth checking out. If you are only here for 6 months, I would consider location to be most important and worry less about how much space you have or how comfortable your furniture is, as you won't be spending much time in your apt. You want to be hanging out at cafes, people watching, going to clubs, bar hopping, going to the theaters etc. I would also weigh in safety issues and think about whether you'll be taking cab everywhere or the subway or you just simply want to walk everywhere (which is possible here in NYC). Leave your car behind is my best advice.
 
#15
Wow! Pricey!!! It's pricey in major cities. And here I am, cringing at the rent increase for this year at my apartment. LOL. I hope you find a reasonably priced one. Good luck!
 
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