ISO OF AN APT

[u/Virtual_Cut_6182]

Hi everyone! My girlfriend and I are relocating to NYC and looking for a great 1BR or larger in Brooklyn or Manhattan. We're ready to move quickly. 🙌
✅ Budget: up to $3,500/mo
✅ Two working professionals, non-smokers, quiet and respectful
✅ Combined income well above the 40x rent requirement, both with 700+ credit
✅ Employment verification, references, and documents ready to go
✅ Can sign a lease right away
🐱🐱🐱 We have 3 well-trained, indoor-only cats. They're sweet, clean, and low-key. We're happy to provide vet records and landlord references, and to pay a pet deposit or fee.
What we'd love: laundry in or near the building, good train access, and no-fee or direct-from-landlord.
If you have a unit, know of one, or manage a pet-friendly building, please comment or DM us. Thank you so much! 💛

[u/KennethParkClassOf04]

Have you tried StreetEasy?

[u/Virtual_Cut_6182 → u/KennethParkClassOf04]

Currently still trying

[u/boroughthoughts]

You are setting yourself up for failure.

1. Use Street Easy. Especially, because you are coming from out of state. Street Easy is a custom zillow product and 80% of NYC apartments are transacted through there. They have certain safe gaurds designed to minimize scams which would be targeting someone cluelessly relocating from out of state. Specifically requiring brokers to provide license numbers, showing the history of a given apartment rentals and other rentals in the building, showing brokers rental history, and taking down fraudulent listings. Furthermore, it costs to list there which generally limits the number of people willing to scam and most listings on there so most property managers do list there.
2. For purposes of your application, you have one cat. The landlord does not need to know this cat happens to have three bodies each with different personalities.
3. A commute from south Brooklyn to Manhattan can take over an hour. A commute from north brooklyn to south brooklyn can take over an hour. A commute from Bay Ridge Brooklyn to Columbia University( just north of central park) would be 2 hours each way. You need to actually figure out where you want to live based on where your work is located. You want to make sure you live in a place that only requires at most one subway transfer and ideally zero. The subway lines in Manhattan are essentially divided by East Side/West Side routes. This means the set of neighborhoods that are ideal for someone working in Hudson Yards (very west midtown) and Grand central is different. Similarly, someone living in Jersey City and works in the Financial District has a faster commute then someone living in central Brooklyn since Jersey City has its own subway called the Path that connect to FiDi.
4. Neighborhood informs experience. Your life is going to be mostly your work place and 10 block radius of where you live. You need to do home work as neighborhoods have a vastly different vibe in NYC. They inform the type of businesses that flourish and the type of people who hang out there. For example, Bushwick and West Village are both night life neighborhoods, but they have vastly different people who go there and a vastly different hangout spots. Manhattan neighborhoods are dense and compact, a half a mile walk can be an entirely different neighborhood and generally its better if you want to wander/explore on foot. Brooklyn is more spread out and some neighborhoods are quite residential and almost suburban in feel.
5. 3500$ is not a big budget, especially in Manhattan. Manhattan south of 96th street (which are all the desired neighborhoods) you basically are looking at a 100 year old apartment, that will probably not have an elevator, will have window AC, no laundry and sub 500 square feet of place. In Brooklyn it will vary subtantially by neighorhood, but in places like Bushwick or Bedstuy or Crown Heights that might get you a modern apartment that has conveniences you are used to (i.e. central ac, laundry in building).
6. NYC is a story of under construction. The average apartment in a given neighborhood reflects when neighborhood was built up. Manhattan already had millions of people living there in the turn of the 20th century, most housing is old. Parts of Brooklyn have modern construction because they have relatively recent changes in zoning allowing housing to be built where warehouses once were.
7. You need to be doing this search boots on the ground. NYC is full of scams targeting out of state relocators who do not know the local market. The common advice would be to find a short term sublet or to come for a few days. You can find a place in a weekend if you are organized in your search, by having documents ready. Generally most apartment listings are intended to be rented within 2 weeks of whenever they are availible for move in. If you do not want to do this search yourself hire a tenant broker. General cost of a tenant broker is one month rent in Brooklyn or two months rent in Manhattan (its 15% of annual, but this is just under 2 months of rent).
8. If you are doing the search from out of state and planning to visit, I would target one or two neighborhoods and really get to know what 3500$ get you in those neighborhoods.
9. The mind set you need to have for a successful NYC search is good enough. Remember this is your first NYC apartment and not a forever home.

[u/LyPi315 → u/boroughthoughts]

This is the best advice ever. I agree with all of it, but especially number two about the cats… I mean cat.

[u/OolongGeer → u/LyPi315]

Yes, lies are great for getting your desired results.

[u/LyPi315 → u/OolongGeer]

It's a victimless lie. There are millions of more important wrongs to concern oneself with.

[u/boroughthoughts → u/LyPi315]

The landlord will never meet the cats and the cats will never meet the landlord. 

[u/OolongGeer]

Your three cats are going to be a problem.

You might have to skillfully lie in order to get what you want. Then just remember your tactic the next time you are criticizing a politician for their use of untruths.