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NYC info Needed

ElMon

ElMon

Supporting Member
May 30, 2004
7,364
6,345
44
Oklahoma City, OK
#1
I wanted some info from you NYCTB'ers as to the best way to go about finding an apartment in the Big Apple. I'm looking for something cheap obviously, and am not opposed to shackin up with a stranger. What's the best way to do it without having to pay a middleman to scout out a place?

Currently I've got a buddy livin in Astoria Queens and he highly recommends it. Any info would be greatly appreciated.
 
#2
Astoria is a great area to be close to the city while paying less than manhattan rent. It's a cool area as well, not so much on the live music but lots of restaurants, bars etc.

Most of the ads you'll see for 'no broker fee' apartments are usually bogus, it's to get you to phone and they'll say "that one is gone, how about this one..." which of course DOES have a brokers fee.

craigslist has listings for room shares - [Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

And there's always roommates.com, which I've heard decent things about although I never personally used it.
 
#6
craigslist is a pretty good way to go. That and you can just look in the paper/on the street for classifieds. you might want to check out some of the apartments in staten island. theyre def going to be cheaper than in the city, though it is a bit of an inconvenience to live in staten island. liveable, but rough if you commute every day.
 
#7
try looking across the river in jersey city. its being gentrified by the hour, and with one trip on the PATH train, you could be anywhere from midtown to the village. but astoria is a great place. my sis lives right off ditmars, and its rather laid back, and crime isnt too bad.

also, try further out in queens. anywhere along the 7 train is pretty cheap and safe.

and i dunno if its true these days, but try www.villagevoice.com every tuesday for the first of the updates. i remember post college, it was one of the defacto ways of finding an apartment.
 
#8
Once again, thanks for the info, and I look forward to actually meeting some of you Yanks. IMHO, and no offense to anyone here on TB who I don't know, LA is a cesspool of depravity and everyone I met there seemed disengenuous and transparent, excepting the very small minority of folks who were born and raised in California. That and all that driving made my wallet hurt.
 
#9
ElMon said:
(...) IMHO, and no offense to anyone here on TB who I don't know, LA is a cesspool of depravity and everyone I met there seemed disengenuous and transparent, excepting the very small minority of folks who were born and raised in California. That and all that driving made my wallet hurt.
Click to expand...

wow,

and then tell us how you really feel... ;)

but dont worry, people in NYC are pretty straight forward. if you need a mint, we'll let you know. :p
 
#10
ElMon said:
everyone I met there seemed disengenuous and transparent,
Click to expand...
Well, we have some of those folks too :) but mostly you'll know where you stand. You'll find people asking you how much rent you're paying for your apt within about 5 minutes of meeting you.
That and all that driving made my wallet hurt.
Click to expand...
That is truth. A car was more of a hindrance (where to park it? when to move it?) than a help to us when we lived in the city. Unlimited monthly metrocard is your friend :)
 
#12
Good deals come up from time to time, so the less of a hurry you're in, the better the chance of finding something great.

If you're considering more of a loft environment, where you could play bass and rehearse, you might want to look at bushwick/east williamsburg, the gowanus canal area, and (if you have a car) red hook.

There seems to be a whole musician/theatre community in the bronx and in the way north parts of manhattan (washington heights, inwood). aparently there's a lot of cheap rent there. But you're far from downtown, where all the fun is.
 
#13
ElMon said:
I wanted some info from you NYCTB'ers as to the best way to go about finding an apartment in the Big Apple. I'm looking for something cheap obviously, and am not opposed to shackin up with a stranger. What's the best way to do it without having to pay a middleman to scout out a place?

Currently I've got a buddy livin in Astoria Queens and he highly recommends it. Any info would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...


For Manhattan Apartments, a landlord will want to see income of at least 50 times the monthly rent. So a TYPICAL one bedroom is now like $2200, you have to show an income of $110,000. If you dont have that, you have to have a cosigner, who must make 100 times the monthly rent. This is for apts below 110 on the west, 96 on the east, certain areas like Chinatown excluded. My broker said 80% of the apts he rented had a cosigner.

Walkup studios are now around $1500. Brooklyn and Queens are much cheaper.

These sites will allow you to gauge Manhattan, and a little of the outer boroughs

www.citi-habitats.com
www.manhattanapts.com

Brokers charge 12-18% of the annual rent, however.

Craigslist is good, but the VVoice and NYTimes ads area usually already out of date.

I went through this all last year about this time. Just don't plan on having a car.
 
#14
Once again, no offense to my LA tb'ers, your all beautiful snowflakes. Besides, I mostly ran into "Hollywood" types and kids from "the Bu", so really I missed out on all the bassplayers.
This is great. My first order of business is to find the right job before I leave OKC again. Then I'll be armed by all this veteran information.
 
#15
I pretty much agree with everyone above, you can't really live cheaply in the city anymore unless you're above 100th st you know? At a certain point, depending on where you work/do your leaning against a wall, you're better off just moving to bklyn/jersey.

For example, I've been trying to get out of nyu housing for a while but I can't find a roommate (long story, loans/finances involved). But my other roommate graduated and he and his gf got an apartment in harlem (if 189 is still harlem, I've never been up there to visit). This wouldn't really be a problem if they weren't the whitest-bred, naive people I've ever met. They also both still work in the Village, so they have a 30 minute commute every day. for the same money they're paying, they could have moved to brooklyn and taken the L into the city in 5 minutes, but they wanted to "stay in the city... it's cooler."

Don't be like these people. It will do you no good.
 
#17
paulraphael said:
(...)
There seems to be a whole musician/theatre community in the bronx and in the way north parts of manhattan (washington heights, inwood). aparently there's a lot of cheap rent there. But you're far from downtown, where all the fun is.
Click to expand...

yea,

and its also as dangerous as it gets in NYC! :eek: Inwood is not what it used to be. from most accounts i've heard, much of the guiliani crackdown pushed alot of the hustlers up further into the bronx and mostly in Inwood. real shame.
 
#18
fenderx55@yahoo said:
I pretty much agree with everyone above, you can't really live cheaply in the city anymore unless you're above 100th st you know? At a certain point, depending on where you work/do your leaning against a wall, you're better off just moving to bklyn/jersey.

For example, I've been trying to get out of nyu housing for a while but I can't find a roommate (long story, loans/finances involved). But my other roommate graduated and he and his gf got an apartment in harlem (if 189 is still harlem, I've never been up there to visit). This wouldn't really be a problem if they weren't the whitest-bred, naive people I've ever met. They also both still work in the Village, so they have a 30 minute commute every day. for the same money they're paying, they could have moved to brooklyn and taken the L into the city in 5 minutes, but they wanted to "stay in the city... it's cooler."

Don't be like these people. It will do you no good.
Click to expand...

yea,

a friend of mine is like that too, and its painfully obvious they're wasting their time/energy. :rolleyes:
 
#19
I cross through Inwood a lot, as it's right across a pedestrian bridge from where I live, and in all fairness, it's like many places in New York where depending on the time of day and which block you're on, it can be very "nice" and orderly, or it can be a bit more...what's that word for when there are a lot of hispanics with their loud music and crazy West-Side-Story-style dance-fights, anyway, it can be that, too. For example: Riverside Park on a Sunday morning: lovely place to take a jog, play with your children, throw a frisbee around. Riverside Park at one in the morning....not such a great place to bring your children. It depends on the time of day and the specific location within a neighborhood. To write off an entire neighborhood as dangerous would limit your chouces greatly. Besides, my friend was once mugged on 96th and Broadway in broad daylight. Of course, this was a scrawny white kid wearing a rasta hat and carrying a skateboard that had "WHITE CHOCOLATE" written on the top in white paint, but the point is...Umm....don't do stupid stuff and you'll be fine in many more places than you'd think.

-Stephen
 

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