APT info from BACKSTAGE.com 8/05 by Leonard Jacobs
You just got off the bus, train or plain in this city of strangers. You're here to carve out a performing career. You've got your suitcase in one hand and a theatre arts degree in the other. But did they teach in college you how to find an apartment? Get a job? Where to buy groceries? What you'll need like pictures, resumes, cell phones, and promotion tools to get started pursuing your dreams? And most importantly, how much is all this going to cost?
That's where Back Stage's annual "Welcome to New York" spotlight comes in. Our writers have combed the big city to give you the specific amounts you'll need to spend to get by in Gotham. We've included a budget with monthly expenses as well as a handy list of service organizations. You'll want to keep this special pull-out section to make big-city living more manageable.
Finding an Apartment
Equate your apartment search with playing a role: If you're too eager, green, or unlearned in the wild, woolly ways of the New York real estate scene, you may end up, metaphorically, on the cutting-room floor. However, if you're savvy and assured, with a strong sense of what you want, you may end up a star.
First, learn the basic geography. Living in Manhattan, it is not unusual to spend 40%50% of your monthly take-home income on rent. Which is why the city is such a patch quilt of outer-borough communitiessuch as Brooklyn's Williamsburg, Park Slope, Fort Greene, and Greenpoint, and Queens' Long Island City, Astoria, Sunnyside, and Jackson Heights. As the city's real estate market has turned red-hot, the colonization by artists of yet more communities has accelerated. Many parts of upper Manhattan, such as Harlem, Hamilton Heights, Washington Heights, and Inwood, are artist-friendly, while Staten Island's northern halfthe half nearest Manhattanis a burgeoning bedroom community.
Second, learn terms. Under the law, "rent-controlled" apartmentsa phrase applicable to apartments in buildings built before 1947 in which you or a family member has lived since 1971can no longer be rented. "Rent-stabilized" apartments, however, remain plentiful, and even if there are fewer of them than there used to be, they still number in the hundreds of thousands. If you find one, appreciate it: Rent increases, which can come every year or every other yearby law you can ask for a one- or two-year leasealmost never exceed 10% and are typically 3%6% on rent-stabilized apartments.
Third, steel yourself for sticker shock. In Manhattan, $1,500 studios induce shock and awe. One- and two-bedroom apartments, especially below East or West 96th Street, routinely top $2,000. Brooklyn is the second most expensive part of the city, with prices often rivaling Manhattan's. So think about Astoria and Long Island City in Queens: While not cheap, the rental rates make more sense on an artist's salary, and a $1,000 studio or $1,200 one-bedroom might even give you a view of the Manhattan skyline and generous square footage.
Bearing all this in mind, there are two ways to find that matchbox of your own. You can find it yourself, which saves you money but eats up time, or you can find it through a broker or service, which eats up money but saves you time. Each has advantages and disadvantages.
The chief advantage of finding an apartment yourself is that you won't have to pay a commission to a brokerno small change, since it can run as high as 20% of a year's rent. If your monthly rent on a studio is $1,000, for example, that means as much as $2,400 goes to the broker. You can often negotiate this down, however, and you should try to. And if a broker, owner, or building superintendent ever asks for a lump sum in exchange for what seems like way-too-cheap rent, worry about the law: "Key money" is illegal.
Arguably the most popular way to find an apartment without a broker is by using Craig's List (newyork.craigslist.org). The website's housing section is comprehensive and well-organized, so perhaps start with its database of all available apartments, then search by subset: owners, no-fee brokers, fee brokers, and registration services, some of which are free, some of which charge fees.
Here, too, the terms are simple. An owner is an ownerperhaps of a private house large enough to subdivide into apartments, which is common in Brooklyn and Queens, or perhaps the owner of a small apartment building. A no-fee broker is also true to its name: a middleman charging no commission, typically the management company of an upscale building whose job it is to fill apartments. A fee broker is the same as a real estate broker with a storefront, except that by checking them out on the Internet, you can often get a quicker sense of whether you should trust them.
Internet-based registration and listings services are ubiquitous in New York and there is little consensus about them. Stop nine people on the street and three will laud them, three will loathe them, and three won't know much about them. Research them thoroughly and think twice before signing upespecially when they charge princely sums for access to rental listings. Among the better sites: www.rent-direct.com ($135, 60-day memberships), www.apartment-store.com ($49.99, listings access), and www.mlx.com ($149, listings access).
Sites that require you to register or that list available rentals include www.newyorkcitynofeerentals.com, www.ardorny.com, www.nycdwellers.com (great inexpensive rentals), www.cityrealty.com, www.nycaptsinc.com, www.citysitesny.com, www.easyrent.com (no-commission rentals only), www.nofeerentals.com, and www.citi-habitats.com. Also visit www.citycrybs.com for something funkier than usual. If you're going the roommate route, check out www.roommatehunters.com ($10, 30 days of search services), as well as www.1800roommates.com and www.easyroommate.com (free searches).
Finally, sometimes the analog angle is best, so don't stop scanning newspaper ads. The Village Voice, which hits the newsstand late Wednesday, is still the unquestioned first stop on the new-apartment tour, but also check its website (www.villagevoice.com) because it's updated throughout the week. And on Sundays, The New York Times sometimes has interesting leads, too.
Leonard Jacobs
