New York Apartment Hunting 101

Tomorrow we go to sign our lease on our New York apartment. But I am not ready to write about that yet. Instead I am going to rewind a little bit to a little more than a week ago when we got a crash course on how different things are in Manhattan.

We had been in touch with an agent here for about a month before we left Kansas City, Liz Dworkin, Sam's cousin. She has been selling real estate here for many years and offered to help us find a furnished rental. We spent parts of three days with her with a wide range of properties that we had culled from dozens of listings she sent us beforehand.

This is not unlike house hunting where you quickly become disillusioned and accept the fact that your tastes don't match your budget and keep nudging that upper limit a little bit higher with every viewing. We felt a bit like Goldilocks in that everything had some fatal flaw. It was too small, too shabby, too far from this or that, the furniture was not our style. We came to realize that going furnished was not going to work out this time around. The furnished rentals in our budget have just been abused. They are sublet to uncaring renters or kids who turn them into flop houses.

So we looked at some condos. Condos here are a different animal. Each building is like a gated community and a distinct neighborhood. They have boards that have to approve you to keep up the quality of the tenants/owners and the values of the homes. The application fees are outrageous. We found one that we liked and were ready to make an offer on until we found the application fees totaled $1700 that was non-refundable. Also, the owners wanted the renters to pay both commissions, the listing agent and the showing agent, which came to another $6300 up front. Ummmm, no.

Some terms that we learned:

Windowed kitchen-we didn't get one.

Windowed bathroom-not that either.

Condo-got that but the owner paid the fee.

Board approval-didn't have to do that.

Application fee-$50 as opposed to the above.

Move in fee-none here but it is typical to pay $500 to move in and $500 again when you move out.

Southern exposure-didn't get this either, this can substantially raise your rent.

Street view-usually fifth floor or below and means no view.

City view-usually the sixth floor of above, we got the 15th floor.

River view-that will cost you too.

Roof top terrace-just like it sounds, a common area for the tenants only, we got one.

New York heating and cooling laws-complicated restrictions on when the building turns on the heating and cooling....don't ask.

Parquet floors-somebody made a bundle on this, every place we viewed that was more than five years old had this, including ours.

Terraced-includes a ledge less than three feet by six feet where you put two chairs to sit in and pretend you are not scared to death on the side of a building.

You can see more photos from our quest HERE. None of these are the one we wound up with.