Apartment searching in New York is a pain in the ass. There are a lot of things that landlords and brokers do to make the process difficult for anyone working full-time. I think every landlord should have a lot of photos of their apartments as well as a detailed floorplan. That could save everyone a lot of time (and further reduce the need for brokers).
I can think of a few reasons why they want to make it harder to find good apartments:
- When it's difficult to find an apartment on your own brokers can charge more (up to 15% of the annual rent in some absurd universes)
- Brokers are lazy and can earn a living by basically doing nothing but carrying a clipboard
- They want to make it more difficult to compare apartments and frustrate you into either paying more or taking suboptimal housing stock off the market
As you know, I am on my own apartment search. I'm happy to report that it's nearly over. My application was accepted on a 1br in the East Village. (Aside: I ended up trading some space for location, but was well below budget, which was unexpected. And, no fee! But, that's a different post)
The reason I'm telling you about this is because I tried really hard to identify any and all tools that would help in finding an apartment without paying a brokers fee. I really believe that brokers should be a dying breed and that maybe we only need maybe the top 10% of them (which is why I thought RentClub could be a good idea). During my search, I spent a lot of time browsing Flyrig, Streeteasy and NYBits looking for no fee apartments. I even entertained a few negotiated fee places. (I came really close on a Garden 1br for $2800 in Chelsea, with a 1 month fee). I looked at Stuytown where it turns out that the apartments are amazing but the price is too high and the location not good (they wanted ~$3200 for a 1br on 20th and Ave B). But, after all of this work, how did I find my place? Craigslist. Amazing. I'm not sure if anyone will ever be able to beat it. The big advantage that it has is that it's easy to use for individual landlords. And, the value it provides to apartment seekers is the wealth of listings. I think I'll be checking craigslist for years to come.
What about you? How did you find your last place?
