Lessons Learned
1. You have too much stuff
We learned this lesson because we lived in the Peninsula of the Bay Area. If you don't live in Palo Alto, of San Francisco, the rent you have to pay will be quite reasonable. Perhaps not be midwestern standards, but at least we felt that our rent was able to cover the one bedroom that we had. It had a large kitchen, nice alchove dining area, decent living room, a couple of large closets, and (get this) a BASEMENT. Originally designed to be my man cave where my wife and I could do all our crafty hobbies, it soon became a larger storage space for a lot of... stuff. When it came time to move, we tried very hard to get rid of as much stuff as we could. Many of the books that I have spontaneously bought on Amazon (and a number I hadn't really read) were given away. I sold quite a lot of my gaming stuff. Clothes were given away etc. etc. A large subsection was taken to my in law's house since they had room and were relatively close. There it will stay until we either move back or decide to get rid of it. We still had a lot of kitchen stuff that we took with us, but only 3 sticks of furniture; the queen bed, a coffee table, and the 42" flatscreen that we got as a steal from conn.com. All the other IKEA furniture was given away as we ran out of time to sell it.
2. No Seriously. You have too much stuff
When you move to NYC, you suddenly realize a couple of things.
1. Your rent is going to go up.
2. You won't have as much room as did back out west.
Although we were expecting to be paying more and having less room, its amazing just how much MORE true this was.
We fell into the stereotypical trap that apparently befalls so many fresh graduates. They come to the big city a $2000/mo budget and big ideas about a doorman, brownstones, 1 bedrooms in the village etc. etc. They soon discover that that doesn't exist. So they begrudgingly raise their budget and/or change their preferences, and eventually find a place somewhere they weren't expecting. It'll be a closet, especially if its in Manhattan, but it'll be home. We found a place with a really nice renovated kitchen. The bedroom was TINY, and only 1 closet in the whole place. BUT, my wife loves to design for small spaces, and the kitchen solves all our storage needs, so from our perspective its perfect. Not sure where my remaining hobby stuff will go but we'll figure that out when we finally move in.
3. Figure out what brokers are
You don't HAVE to have a broker in NY, but I think its hard to actually avoid the fees whatever you do, especially if you're new and don't really know what you're doing.
There are so many horror stories about fraudulent craigslist ads, and people being ripped off, that we felt using a broker would be the best option. People will tell you there are fee-less apartments out there, and I believe them, but don't have any experience so can't judge.
There are 2 types of broker; there are the seller brokers who are usually showing the individual places, and there are the buyer brokers, who show YOU around to various places that either they have found or you have supplied them that you want to be shown. Whatever you do, you'll have to pay around 15% of the annual rent to someone. If you found the place on something like streeteasy.com, then they'll almost always be a broker who put the listing up there. If a broker shows you a place, you'll have two brokers. The nice news is that you don't have to pay each of them 15%. Instead they do what's called a "co-broke" where they split the 15%, so win there. Some brokers don't like to split commissions. This is illegal, but usually those brokers will be listed somewhere online (such as Yelp) as shady. This is a bit stressful because when you're new, you don't know who to trust.
4. You can shop for a broker
We had two broker companies. One person was referred to us, and so we went with them. I won't rant at them, but I think it was not the best fit. They were a little eccentric, and showed us places in the areas we thought we should look, but we just weren't seeing enough places. So we started looking at places on our own. This made us feel shady, like were looking at places "behind the broker's back". In addition to this, the broker stoked our fears a bit when they said that "you have to apply immediately if you like a place because it can get snatched up from under you", "the market is INSANE" etc. etc. This is not what you want to hear when you first move and have a limited time to find a place. That 15% is a punch to the gut if you're not ready for it (For a $2350 1 bedroom, that's $4230 just in brokerage fees ALONE. Ouch).
5. Don't put up with pushy brokers if you don't want to
They also got pushy. The broker company wanted us to move into a condo complex. We were initially excited about it, but changed our minds at the last minute because we went back to the neighborhood and decided it wasn't for us. The broker who I think could smell commission so close, got a bit upset, and then got frankly hostile when I said we were backing out. They (3 different brokers from the same company) kept trying to tell us how much we wanted to move into the neighborhood, and continually cut us off over the phone. It reminded me very much of when I was at a timeshare sales pitch event. Pushy pushy pushy. Eventually I stopped answering the phone because if you're just going to get cut off, why bother? We eventually simply said that we wanted to look on our own for a bit, a nice way of saying we didn't want to work with them anymore. I HATE pushy salespeople. I get very stressed out, and get angry later when I calm down because I don't know how to fight them fire with fire style. I don't think these brokers were trying to be shady or mean. They just were excited about finding places, but I think went about it the wrong way from our perspective. Perhaps if you are pushy back, things work out better. But we don't work that way.
6. Not Pushy Brokers are GREAT. You WILL find a place.
We looked on our own, but from other personal references, we found another broker that was much nicer. I'll mention them by name because they ROCK. Cooper&Cooper. They allayed our fears, and even when we asksed "but what if we don't find a place today?", he said "then we keep looking. There's quite a lot out there". THAT'S what you want to hear as a new New Yorker. Our first day, he showed us 2 out of 3 places that we could have signed, with about 2 hours notice that we were working with him and hearing our initial preferences. Then he gradually figured out our preferences, and asked us about them, rather than telling us. He was the opposite of pushy. That said, he did say if we liked a place to put in an application as soon as we could (even if we wait a day) because places do get signed off quickly. So we signed on a place that we liked and we signed but we hadn't handed over any checks. That night, the place was run by a management company and we were uneasy about some negative reviews it had received online, so we called to cancel. The broker said "ok. No problem. My priority is to fit you with the place that you want. Let's keep looking tomorrow". THAT'S not pushy. That's class. We were so happy and trusted him so much that we found a place on our own (went to an open house really), but wanted him to vet the place and the brokerage/landlord to make sure it was kosher. We were also happy that he would be getting at least a co-broke from helping us so much. Cooper and Cooper also seems to be the only brokerage that has 5 stars on Yelp. I do hope they push their cred as helpful to out-of-towners. I don't know how big the market is, but I guessing there's money to made in that with great customer service.
7. Everything is negotiable.
And I mean everything. The broker's fee? The monthly rent? You name it, you can haggle about it. As long as you have something to give in return. Say you want to lower the rent by $50. Offer to sign for 2 years, or to pay 3 months in advance if you have the savings. The worst they can say is no. You can't go TOO low or they won't take you seriously, but $50 or even $100 is not out of the question I think.
8. Prices drop throughout the month.
As the renters want to rent places, if you wait long enough (and the place hasn't been snatched up), you'll see places start to drop their prices. We saw a super cute place (except the kitchen) go from $2450 to $2350 in a weekend. Its basically a dutch auction where the price keeps going down until someone rents the place. Beware though that if the month resets (i.e. the 1st fo the month comes around again), then the price tends to reset because they generally want people to move in by the 1st of the month. We had to move in a little early so we kicked our landlord a little advance rent. He said there was some stuff like the bathroom that might not be cleaned before we moved in, but it wasn't that dirty, and we can clean it. Like I said. Everything's negotiable. Gotta love this town.
9. Give yourself time to look for a place
We were lucky in that we were able to housesit at a friend's house for August while we looked for a place. This enabled us to take our time and really decide before signing. If you have that option, I recommend it. There are quite a lot of sublets available during the summer because people don't like to move out of their place and they may skip town for the summer. Perfect if you're looking to move in right after that month.
Well as Forrest Gump said "that's all I've got to say about that". I might add to this list if I can think of anymore.
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