Big City Living

Moving in New York

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I know you were all anxiously awaiting the denouement (SAT word!) of my Apartment Moving Saga, and I’m happy to give a quick update, but the conclusion Is still forthcoming. Long story short: we have a new apartment! And it even has wifi! I can finally post on my blog from home!

That’s the good news. Bad news: our oven doesn’t work in the new place and our old apartment has f*cked us over with our security deposit (no surprise there). Anyway, at the very least, I have learned a lot. I have learned enough to NOT MOVE EVER AGAIN. Or at least not again in the near future.

I’ve lived in New York City for 7.5 years, and miraculously I have only lived in 3 (now 4!) apartments in that span of time. However, that does not mean I have not embarked on many many more apartment hunts than that. Ultimately, I have only moved those few times (yes, every 2-3 years is few in NYC), because moving SUCKS. Not only does moving suck, but moving in New York is literally. THE. WORST.

I’ve compiled a not-so-short list of why apartment hunting in New York sucks, as well as my expert tips, gleaned from years of experience, as to how to combat the list of terribles.

  • You can only look for an apartment 2-3 weeks in advance. Yes, I said WEEKS. If you look for an apartment before this time, they will want you to move in too soon (an impossibility due to the cost of rent), or, the apartment will already be taken by the time you want it. Of course this causes anxiety levels so high that I have been self-medicating for months. I assure you, this is normal. When you need to give your current building at least 2 months of notice before vacating, yet you cannot begin searching for a place until 2 weeks prior, you have at least a month to sweat it out, thinking about all of the ways you will fit your worldly belongings into a cardboard box in Times Square.
    • How to combat this: booze. Lots of it.
  • When you go to view an apartment, you need to have at least $9,000 in your bank account ready to go, as well as a credit score over 700. No, you didn’t read that wrong, that is 3 zeros. And yes, I mean for a 1-bedroom apartment, not a house. You need at least the first month, last month, and security deposit. When a one-bedroom apartment costs $3,000 on a good day, you’re looking at close to $10K
    • How to combat this: be rich? I dunno. This is a tough one to combat. Probably just have no savings account and live paycheck-to-paycheck for months after moving.
  • You need documentation of your entire life. Most recently, the building asked for a two-page application listing bank account numbers, savings account numbers, previous building information, etc. They also required my most recent bank statement. Also, my previous two year’s tax returns. Also, my last two pay stubs. Also, a letter from my current building vouching for me. Also, a letter from my employer stating my position and salary. They also required this from my emoji-bf. My coworker recently submitted an apartment application where they asked for his college transcript. He had not been in school for years.
    • How to combat this: Be prepared. And try not to piss off your current building too much because asking them for a letter of recommendation will get very awkward. Yes, I know from experience.
  • Every apartment you see will be missing something you really wanted. How to find a diamond in the rough? Make a list of non-negotiable things you are looking for before you embark on a search. Apartments within your budget are all going to look terrible. It is possible that you need to adjust or modify this list as your search proceeds. However, it’s a good idea to know what you are looking for, so you don’t get swayed after seeing dump after dump of apartments. Example: “Yes I was looking for an elevator building with a dishwasher, and this is a 5th floor walk-up with no dishwasher… but I can actually fit a full-size bed in the bedroom as opposed to the last 5! Let’s take it!”
    • How to combat: Make a list. Stick to it. Or at the very least, exhaust your search before modifying your expectations.
  • Broker fees are the biggest waste of money ever. Don’t be a fool, do you due diligence. You can probably find a great place without paying a fee. And it may mean raising your budget by $200/month. But in the grand scheme of things, you’ll be paying your broker at least $2,500, so why not put that money into your apartment, and not to some rando you’ll never speak to again? One of the main reasons I liked the apartment I’m currently writing this from is because the broker had friendly banter with me about how brokers’ fees are useless and dumb. I liked him immediately (and I did not pay him anything).
    • How to combat: DO NOT PAY A BROKER’S FEE. SEARCH HARDER.
  • Brokers are slimy conniving pieces of crap. Oh look, a follow-up from the last bullet point. I am making a generalization because it is true. And yes, this is separate from the point above. Here I am talking about the no-fee brokers. By no-fee, I mean, you are personally not paying them. However, they are still getting paid by someone, which means they are driven solely by commissions, and not by your actual wants, needs, and stated demands. Example: Me: “Yes, our budget is $3,000/month. Elevator, possible doorman, 69th street to 97th” Broker: “Well I have a place just outside of your price range in the area you’re looking. It’s $3,400/month, 3rd floor walk-up, on 107th street.” WTF.
    • How to combat: Be firm. Be clear. Do not waver. Do not be gaslit. Remember your list of demands!
  • A security deposit is really an aspirational amount of money you hope to see again but probably won’t. They say it’s to make sure you keep your apartment nice. According to a quick google search, you should get your money back unless they need to pay for repairs for damage other than normal wear and tear. However, this is absolutely never the case. In fact, when I typed into google “New York Sec” the first populated search was “New York Security Deposit Law.” And no, I had never searched for this before.
    • How to combat: Kiss your money goodbye. The good news is, there’s an emoji created specifically for this phenomenon: dollar bills with wings. Flying away.

Hopefully some of these tips will help you in the future. If not, remember, I feel you. And misery loves company. Let’s chat.

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Big City Living

Moving Apartments: A Saga

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And a saga it has been. If you were wondering what I’ve been doing with my time while neglecting my blog, here you go. Let’s start at the beginning.

The News

Our current building has a policy stating that we must give 30 days Notice to Vacate if we do not planning on staying in the apartment. Depending on which document you look at. Some places say 60 days. They are supposed to give a renewal offer at 75 days until the end of the lease so the tenants can decide.

Our lease began on February 1st. At the beginning of December I realized we still did not have a renewal offer. I emailed our building. They said OOPS. And sent us an “offer” to stay and pay $550 more per month. Emoji bf took a screenshot of the offer and sent it to me with the caption “LOL.”

And LOL we did. We laughed so we didn’t cry. And then of course I wrote them back saying thanks but no thanks. We decided we would have to move. And by decided, I mean, we realized if we wanted to eat for the next year, we would need to find a cheaper roof over our heads. A cardboard box in Times Square was a possibility.

After informing the management company we intended to leave, they told us our lease was over on the 29th of January. SURPRISE!!! In case you’re thinking, “but aren’t there 31 days in January!?” then you’re thinking the same thing as I was. Maybe it was a mistake? NOPE. Our building company wrote our lease to go from 2/1/17 to 1/29/18. And we signed it. Our fault. Sorta. What kind of sheisty sh*t is that though? I made it very clear with a strongly worded email, signed Esq., that we would not be paying for a full month of rent if we were vacating early. They reluctantly agreed. But when our January rent charge showed on our account, do you think they prorated it as promised?? I’ll let you guys guess.

The Hunt

The Hunt was complicated by the fact that you cannot search for an apartment in New York until 3 weeks before your move date. More on this in my next blog about apartment hunting tips and tricks.

Unfortunately, 3 weeks before our mandatory evacuation of our sky-high-rent apartment, emoji-boyfriend was out of town. And then 2 weeks before our move, I was out of town (Seattle and Vancouver, remember?). We realized we would have to search for an apartment separately. Tricky, right?

Emoji-man was on the west coast and I began looking at apartments every day. I became addicted to apartment listings. I was more excited when I got a push notification from Streeteasy than when I got a text from my long-distance boyfriend. I went to sleep dreaming about square footage and the perfect apartment with an IN-UNIT WASHER DRYER. Of course I then woke up and realized that if I wanted an apartment with a good location AND a stove we would need to pay more than $3,000/month. (Yes, there are apartments I went to see that were going for $2,700, were 400 square feet and had solely a hot plate and sink as a “kitchen.”)

After visiting approximately 20 apartments of varying quality on a scale of horrible to horrendous, I finally found a diamond in the rough, IN OUR PRICE RANGE! Miracle. Literally. I took a video on my phone, and sent it over to emoji-bf. He was impressed as well. He said we should take it. I texted the broker within an hour of viewing the place and told him we were ready to move forward.

The Application

Our broker emailed me and said, “So excited you’re interested in the apartment. I now need every single document about your life ever written, plus a promissory note for your first-born child.” JK. But it was just shy of that. They asked for an application, plus pay stubs, bank statements, savings account numbers, checking account numbers, a letter from our current building, a letter from both employers, a copy of our ID’s, a credit check with an associated online payment system, and tax returns for the previous two years.

While my boyfriend attempted to get all of these documents together from the west coast, I had to act as nice as I possibly could to get a recommendation letter from my current building, who I had just gotten in a rent argument with, 3 days prior. FUN!

Finally, we got these documents together and I submitted them. We also had a minor setback when my employment verification letter did not state my salary and I had to resubmit it. Why were the pay stubs and tax documents not sufficient to show this? I will never know.

APPLICATION APPROVED!!!

The Lease

FINALLY. Approved. Done now, right? WRONG. We needed to both sign the lease, and bring them two certified bank checks, one for the first month of rent, one for the security deposit. Easy. No problem. But no.

Emoji-bf was out of town, remember? So he couldn’t sign. And I don’t have $6K+ sitting in my bank account. Also, I was leaving town on the Thursday of that week. We were approved on a Monday. I asked our broker about the lease. He said we would get it Tuesday end of day. 3 pm Tuesday: no lease. I asked again. Broker said he was sorry but the lease guy wasn’t in the office. He would be in touch Wednesday morning. Wednesday 3 pm: no lease. Again, I called the broker around 5 pm and told him I was nervous because I was leaving town the next day. He said no problem. I can sign electronically, only one signature needs to be original.

11 am Thursday, we get the lease. It is 27 pages long. This is not an exaggeration. I go through every page on my lunch break and sign in 18 places. I scan it and send it back. An hour passes. I get a phone call from our broker saying that my boyfriend needs to sign the same copy, and I “took up too much of the signature lines.” He asked me to redo it. Unfortunately, I was already on my way to the airport so I told him my boyfriend would write small. Problem solved. Finished. Right? WRONG AGAIN.

The Move

I could have started my blog here. After all that mess, my emoji bf was convinced we would be finished with the saga. Just two nights ago he said to me, “we should be good, right? We have the apartment and we have the mover booked.” And I said, “Well… a lot can still go wrong.” Guess who was right…

ME! ME! If you guessed me, you were correct!

Yesterday was the 23rd. We are supposed to move on the 27th. After weeks of chasing down the building management company for a sample Certificate of Insurance for our movers (I didn’t even make a separate section for this, but suffice it to say, it was a battle in and of itself), the management office finally wrote me back. The management guy told me that I should tell my mover to be in touch directly with him. This made me feel a lot better, since it took the building 11 days to get back to me, and we only had 4 days left until our move. JK this did not make me feel better at all. I am 99.9% sure that our movers will never hear back from this guy.

Anyway, in the same email as the COI conversation, I asked about how to get the keys for the apartment. Logical question to ask, 4 days before the move., right? Should be a simple answer. But as you have learned already here today, nothing has a simple answer.

The building manager told me to be in touch with the super. The super’s name and number was on the front page of our “Welcome Packet” (really a 40 page warning packet about the dangers of lead poisoning) that came along with our 27 page lease. I found the packet and called the number on the front. A young girl picked up. She said it was the wrong number. I check the number again. Called again. Same girl. Same wrong number.

4 PM: I emailed the management company.

Me: “Hey soooo either there’s a 10 year old girl answering our super’s phone and lying about who she is, orrr the phone number is wrong.”

Building Manager: “How about you try this other number with a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT LAST 4 DIGITS.”

Me: “Ok cool, I have nothing else to do with my time at my job. I’d love to.”

Me: “Hi, are you the super? I’m moving into the building on Saturday and the management office told me to contact you about getting the keys.”

Super: “What? That’s impossible.”

Me: “Um, no. Yes. What? Yes, we are moving in on Saturday, the 27th? We signed a lease two weeks ago.”

Super: “Well that can’t be, because you can only move Mondays through Fridays. It can’t be Saturday. I knew nothing about this. No.”

Me: “Well our lease actually begins on Saturday. And we already have a mover booked and paid for, over $1,500.”

Super: “I understand but that is just not possible. Who wrote the lease, who told you that?”

Me: “Who wrote the lease? The building management company! How can I make this work? Should I contact the building manager again?”

Super: “Yes, thank you goodbye.”

Well guys, I wish I had a happy ending to this story. But this is how the story ends for now. I have called the building manager, where I got a voicemail message, because of course I was not told the super’s real number until 4 pm, so this whole exchange went down “after normal business hours.” Then I emailed the building, but there is no answer at the time of this blog’s publication. I didn’t sign my emails to the new building with an Esq. yet. I am trying to stay on their good side. We haven’t even moved in yet! Or gotten the keys…

Anyway, does someone have a place for emoji bf and me, and all of our belongings, beginning Saturday? Any roomy cardboard boxes on spacious corners near an express train? Preferably Upper West Side? All suggestions welcome.

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