Finding an apartment in New York City can be quite the overwhelming experience. Good thing I didn't know how crazy it would be until it was too late to change my mind! I met a girl on a housing google group for members of my church who I wanted to live with, so at least I wasn't in it alone! We both spent hours and hours scouring the internet, calling brokers, and sending emails. I came up one weekend to look at places and thought I'd found the perfect place until the reality of income requirements set in. A general rule for renting in the city is that you need to make at least 40 times the monthly rent to qualify for an apartment. If you don't make that, no worries, all you need to do is find someone who makes 80 times the monthly rent who will sign for you. No problem right? Except the rent for any kind of decent place in Manhattan is at least $2,000. Yikes! Luckily there are a handful of other options that made moving here an actual possibility without having to make $80K a year.
Technically I've lived in 3 apartments since moving to the city. The first was on the Upper West Side. A friend and her husband were leaving town for a month and needed someone to sublet their apartment so I ended up staying there while looking for a more "permanent" place. We found a great apartment on the Lower East Side (almost Chinatown) through the google group, the day after I moved here, which was much sooner than we'd anticipated! The girls were moving out but needed someone to take over the rest of their lease right around the time Chelsey (my new roommate) was getting to the city. We lived there from the end of August until December 29th when we moved to the Upper East Side (almost Harlem). It's further uptown than either of us had ever intended to move but we have at least twice the amount of space and a washer/dryer in our unit - no more laundromat!! This is a huge deal.
Before we moved Chelsey and I decided to make a little video of the apartment. When we're all settled into our new place (read: get more furniture) we'll make a video of the new place too. So if you're interested, here is what our charming little apartment next to the Manhattan Bridge looked like!
A few pictures of the view from or window . . .
This was definitely not a bad thing to wake up to!
The bridge all lit up! Photo courtesy of Chelsey.
Where did Brooklyn go?! I love the fog . . .
Whereas there are things I miss about this apartment (mostly it's location) I'm really excited to be in a place I feel I can settle into and stay for a long while.
