"Too Good To Be True": Searching for an apartment in NYC

"If it seems too good to be true, then it is."  

~Julianne Parmenter describing NY real estate listings

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For the past 3 months a certain Englishman and I have been searching for a place we can call our own in the City.  We have stayed in and walked through different neighborhoods from Harlem to Park Slope in Brooklyn.  Each place has both its benefits and what we call "trade-offs."

HARLEM

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As a teenager in the 80's, I shuddered when I heard the word "Harlem."  But it is not like that today.  As Manhattan real estate continues to go up, people look for places with lower rent farther from midtown.  In Harlem you get much more square footage for your dollar.  But because of the gentrification, there are income restrictions to be able to live there.   If you make more than a certain amount, you have to keep looking. So we looked a little more south to the....

UPPER WEST SIDE

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I fell in love with UWS years ago.  I have viewed Nora Ephron's walking tour on the DVD extra features of "You've Got Mail" dozens of times.  Walking into Zabar's for the first time felt like meeting a celebrity.  To me nothing is more romantic than the brownstones west of Central Park.  Until we started looking to live there.  The place has double the density of most other neighborhoods, which means streets filled with people and garbage.  While it has many of the shops, stores, and LDS buildings (temple, Stake Center, Family History Center) close by, it was too overwhelming for a certain Englishman.  He suggested....

UPPER EAST SIDE

I can't bring myself to live in an area where a $50,000 purse is a bargain.  Next...

LOWER EAST VILLAGE

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This is actually a pretty cool neighborhood.  It's got Little Italy, Chinatown, and lots of fashion.  Many celebrities like to call this place home.  It's fun to walk the streets and see all the different styles that hipsters come up with, except the nightlife is a little sketchy and we have our teenage son to consider.  So we looked even farther south in the...

FINANCIAL DISTRICT

I think it took about 30 seconds for a certain Englishman and I to fall in love with Wall Street.  Not Wall Street by day, but Wall Street by night.  It's close to lots of Subway lines, including the 1 which takes you to the LDS temple.  It has several guards standing on the street because, you know, it's Wall Street.  In fact many of the cobblestone streets have barricades preventing car traffic.  We came really close to getting an apartment on Wall Street, but the timing just wasn't right.  A month later we found another place around the corner across from the New York Stock Exchange.  It was beautiful, but expensive.  I decided that even though it's quiet at night, it's filled with tourists by day trying to figure out where the Charging Bull is and how to get to the ferry that will take them to the Statue of Liberty.  I knew I wouldn't go outside much and would feel trapped in a tower.  I wanted to keep looking, so I rented an airbnb in...

PARK SLOPE in BROOKLYN

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I love Park Slope!  I mean really love it.  It's close to Prospect Park which is like Central Park but without all the tourists and peddlers.  It is more like the movie set of "You've Got Mail" than where that movie was actually filmed.  It is filled with strollers, families, tons of cafes, wash-and-fold laundromats, and small grocery stores.  The problem with this idyllic neighborhood is that it is not in the City, in fact it is on average a 40-minute subway from the City.  Which isn't that bad of a commute, but I didn't want to come all the way to Manhattan just to spend almost 2 hours a day underground just to see it.

What else is left?

One day we were attending our church's services and got invited to attend a picnic in a park that evening with other members of the congregation.  We were told to find them at Rockefeller Park.  I have been to NYC many times over the last few years and I had never heard of Rockefeller Park.

"Where is it?" I asked.

"It's in.....

BATTERY PARK CITY

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As a tourist, I had never heard of Battery Park City.  And that is kind of on purpose.  It's not a place for tourists, it's a place for New Yorkers. This neighborhood was built using the landfill from when the World Trade Centers were built.  That's why it is perfectly rectangular.  They wanted to create a place that felt more like a suburb than the city.  It was in hopes of revitalizing the downtown area.  And did it ever.

BPC feels more park than city.  It's right along the Hudson and close to several piers that have mini golf, a skateboard park, volleyball court, soccer fields, kayaking, sailing, and more.  You can see the statue of Liberty as you walk along the Esplanade.  When the sun sets along the Jersey City skyline, the buildings reflect the beautiful colors from the sky onto the Hudson River.

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Does this place seem too good to be true?  My friend's sister-in-law told me "If it seems too good to be true, then it is."  So what's the catch with BPC?  The rent.  The price per sq. ft. can easily be double that of places close by.  Which made me sad, because we had a budget, and we had to stick to it, no wiggle room.

So I did a dumb thing, I called a NY real estate broker.  I figured she'd have access to listings that I didn't have.  Maybe she'd be able to find me something that could justify her 15% of one year's rent brokerage fee.  I told her we were looking for a 2 bedroom and our price range.

She just laughed.  "You aren't going to be able to get that, sweetie."

"I know I'm pushing the limits with our price range, but I'm seeing some listings that seem pretty close to what we need."

"Really?  Send me those listings."

Wait?  Isn't that what I'm supposed to be saying to her?  I wrote her back and said our plans had changed and we'd keep her in mind for the future.  Which wasn't a lie, my plans had changed.  I planned to NOT use a real estate broker.

I decided the next step would be not to look for an apartment, but a building.  I made a new friend who lived in Battery Park City, Allison.  She was gracious enough to send me a list of buildings in BPC that other members of the congregation lived in.  It had a full list of amenities, phone numbers, and addresses.  She gave me for free what the broker wanted thousands of dollars to provide.

I began an arduous search of each and every building to see what the rents, bedrooms, and square footage was like.  Nothing came close to our budget.  But I refused to quit looking.  I decided to create alerts for about 4 or 5 buildings in BPC that I liked.  For 6 weeks I got alerts on my phone whenever a new place came on the market.  Usually the very next day, I got a second alert letting me know it was back off the market.

Three months of looking at NY rents started to numb me to the prices.  So much so, that when a large 6-bedroom, 5-bathroom home went up for sale in my Utah neighborhood for less than $375,000, my first thought was What's wrong with it?  $375K in NYC would maybe get you studio... if you were lucky.

My persistence and research finally paid off.  One Friday afternoon I checked my phone and I got an alert for an apartment in BPC for $500 less than our budget.  It was a 2 bedroom.  A TRUE 2 bedroom, meaning they didn't turn the living room into a "bedroom" by putting up a fake wall.  It seemed too good to be true.  I called a certain Englishman anyway.

"Hey, I just found a place, do you have time to stop by on your way home?"  We were staying in Park Slope at this time about 40 minutes away.

"Sure, I'll give him a call."

A few hours later I got a text from a certain Englishman.  "I just found us our apartment."

The renters were a young pregnant couple off to graduate school.  They needed someone to take over their lease for a few months and then we could get our own.

"Be careful," said Allison, "Once you get your own lease they can raise the price to whatever they want.  You should try to get your own lease right now instead. That way you'll know what they really want you to pay."

By this time we were back in Utah and had to negotiate between emails and infrequent phone calls.  I was on edge.  What if they didn't want to let us sign our own lease?  What if they increase the rent beyond our budget?  What if I never find something that we can afford and like?  Are we destined for long sweaty commutes on the subway?

I was distraught.

And that is putting it mildly, way mildly.

Finally days later, the leasing agent wrote back and said that we could start our own lease with a "slight" increase in the rent.

And what happened next dear readers, is something that should go down in the annals of history.

THE LEASING AGENT SPOKE THE TRUTH

The slight increase was $50/month.  Less than a 2% increase.  A certain Englishman and I were stunned.

"We'll take it," said a certain Englishman.

And that is how we got our place in New York City.  Last night we signed the lease.

View from our soon-to-be kitchen window

We move next week.

Stay tuned for more NYC adventures!