Our New Apartment!

After two months of research and two intense weeks of apartment hunting, we finally have our new apartment! First about our search (some tips and advice to friends living in NYC): because turnover is so quick in New York, you really can’t look seriously until about a month before you want to start your new lease. However, it’s free to research and look around. Nate and I spent several weekends researching the areas, taking notes and marking a printout of a google map of the area which were nice streets to live on, which were not, where “noisy” things like schools, fire stations, and police stations were located, and marked convenient things like Duane Reede, Bank of America, gyms, cleaners, etc. So when we saw listings online, we knew instantly if it was a good street or not, therefore saving us time from viewing apartments that weren’t where we wanted to live.

We looked at both fee and no-fee apartments. I will say that we could tell a dramatic difference in the fee versus no fees. The brokers just have the nicer apartments, and while they charge outrageous fees, you can often talk them down with the right techniques. They start at 15%, you can offer one month rent, and negotiate around 10%. I recommend negotiating, we didn’t for our first apartment but it made a big difference the second time around. We also saw about 15 apartments. We had specific requirements – like we wanted the most space we could get, we did not want to live in a closet sized space just to be next to the park.

We knew it when we found it – the perfect apartment! It’s in a high rise building at the corner of 71st street and Amsterdam avenue. It’s a doorman building which is great, we can have packages delivered when we aren’t home, it has a bike room and laundry facilities. Our apartment is on the 14th floor and well insulated – very quiet. It has views to the north, looking up the upper west side. It’s as large as our two bedroom now, square footage wise, but it’s a one bedroom. It has two walk-in closets, a cute (but smaller) kitchen area, and a very large living area and a huge bedroom. The living area we’ll use for dining and couch/entertainment unit, and the bedroom we will use also as an office. My dad is bringing my desk from Florida – I can’t wait to have a desk again! Right now my desk is the kitchen table LOL. It’s perfect for us and we can move after May 1st!


Picture: view out of our window!