The Hunt

So now that we have recovered from the Evil Flu and Brett has two weeks of work under his belt, and we have sort of explored our neighborhood and figured out where to find things and how to get around, the monumental task before us is Finding A Place To Live.
Everyone has to do it sometimes, so I realize we are not unique in this...but wow, is it ever a jungle out there to do it in New York! There are so many factors that make it especially hard here, like the neighborhoods are drastically different from one block to the next in some places, there is a very low turnover rate so the # of apartments is small for the number of people living here, the cost is very high and many of the apartments are very old, very small or very run-down.
To complicate matters, the brokers regularly "bait and switch" apartments. You might see a great place that looks sunny and bright and large. So you call on it, and they say "Oh, that one has already been rented, but I have some others I can show you that are similar." So you meet the broker to take a look. When you meet the broker, there is no parking, so you park maybe 4 or 5 long long blocks away. The broker walks quickly and brags about the subway and how great it is. The kids you are dragging along are still getting over their colds, so the long walk makes them cough profusely, their noses start running and they sit down on the sidwalk saying "It is too far! I can't walk that fast!" The broker puts on a big fake smile and says it is just another block. You pick up one kid and drag the other one forward by the hand. It actually is not just another block, it is several blocks. And then whoops, the broker forgot to tell you that it is a 5th floor walk up, which means an old building with no elevator and you have to walk up FIVE FLIGHTS of stairs to get to the apartment.
Then there is the money factor. If you happen to take an apartment that a broker showed you, you typically pay a fee equal to 15% the YEARLY rent. I will let you do the math, but that means that to get into an apartment that would be more appropriate for a recent college graduate with no kids, no dogs and no furniture, the cost would be roughly $10,000 for first and last months rent plus the broker fee for the amount of rent we can afford to pay here. Hello!! That is ridiculous.
Also many of the apartments that are advertised with things like Huge! Spacious! Very big! Actually turn out to be 450 square feet.
OK, enough ranting about the apartments. Our new strategy is to look only in our favorite neighborhoods, at the no-fee apartments. There are less to choose from, but the apartment advertised is the actual one you get to see. You save the huge fee, they are frequently rent controlled and generally the owner is showing you the place, so they actually have a key that opens the door (that is another thing that happens frequently when shown places by a broker--"Oops, the key doesn't work. Sorry.") The neighborhoods we like the most, all for different reasons are Upper West Side (between Central Park and Riverside Park), Prospect Park (in Brooklyn, but by another huge park) and Inwood (the very northern tip of Manhattan, by another big park, not as much hubub as the rest of the island).
Forgot to mention the rent controlled thing--there are some strange rules about housing here. Some people are living in apartments they have lived in forever, and the way the rules work, depending on the conditions in when they were first rented, the rent cannot be raised. So there is a huge diversity between the amount different people are paying for the same type of places.
Our first week of apartment hunting has led us to several close fits, but the most important thing we have gained is an education about the neighborhoods here and how the whole real estate thing works. Although it would be nice to have landed something already, we are stepping back a little to realize how much we have gained in terms of understanding the process and knowing more completely what we are looking for.
And we still hunt compulsively whenever we have a minute. There is that feeling that the right place is just around the corner...