Title says it all. My youngest dd just accepted a job in the Upper East Side and now has to find a place to live. We are not familiar with NYC. Salary is around $40,000 so that limits things. Open to all suggestions! And what does one do about furniture? Is it better to buy out there than ship the cheap things she has? I can’t imagine driving a uhaul trailer in the city.
there are some affordable ( for NYC) studios on UES. Cannot remember the name of the neighborhood but it is near the river. be aware that places sometimes require a guarantor ( so?) we had to sign a bunch of financial paperwork to do this when D rented there a few years ago.
D bought furniture from Ikea and had it delivered. much easier.
Her living space will probably be so small that she won’t have room for much furniture. Better to get some after she is moved in. With that salary in NYC, it might be difficult to pay rent and have any money left over to “live” and enjoy the city, so she should try to find some roommates if possible.
The cheapest place to live on the UES is along east-end avenue and york. However, I do not think she will be able to afford a studio on that salary without maybe help or a guarantee from her parents, given that even a walk-up studio will probably be over $2k/mo., Once you get above 96th street rent prices drop, but you are in Spanish Harlem which is not great for someone just coming to the city. An alternative idea is to look over the river in Roosevelt island which is cheaper than Manhattan and is a closed community, albeit a bit older and not that fun for a young person. Perhaps the best bet is to look in LIC (long island city) which is across the east river. This has become a major young professional living zone and it has many new restaurants, bars and places to hang out. There are many residential rentals that are new buildings also. Its not manhattan, but its not a bad option, at probably 70% of the cost of the UES over on York or Eastend ave. You can get lucky… but its a crapshoot with rental vacancies so low. November/December are the best times of year to get an appt, so your timing may be ok. Check out www.Streeteasy.com its a good site for searching rentals. Good luck!
Since your D is working on the UES she should look at Astoria in Queens. Many of my D’s friends (mostly actors/artists) that work on the UES live here as the rents are a bit cheaper and the neighborhoods better than living further uptown on the east side in Spanish Harlem. The area by York on the UES is far from the subway - my D had friends that lived there, but opted to move after a year to places more accessible by subway. I don’t think your D is going to be able to get a decent place without a roommate. She may want to try subletting for a few months to check out various neighborhoods before she signs a lease. You will have to be a guarantor when she does find a place to lease. Be prepared to pay first and last month and many times a security deposit on top of that equal to a month’s rent. My D’s last apartment in Hamilton Heights (on the west side-west Harlem) was $1,800 for a 2 bedroom 1 bath. Her income at the time was similar to what you D will take home after taxes. My D was able live off her income and save money and she still had fun living in the city. Depending on where your D lives she will want to have a monthly subway pass which I think was up to $116 before my D moved back to California last year. D and her roommate bought furniture at Ikea and had it delivered and put it together themselves. They also found many things on Craigslist for the apartment that they could bring home on the subway or via Uber.
Astoria is definitely less expensive than Long Island City, but it may still be difficult for your daughter to rent an apartment at that salary and at her age, without a guarantor and roommates. And I agree that anything east of Second Avenue on the Upper East Side (i.e., First and York) involves a long walk to the subway on Lexington every morning. Which is fine now, but not so fine in winter.
For someone new to NYC, I probably would not recommend going much above 96th Street in Manhattan into Spanish Harlem, no matter how many realtors tell you that it’s an up and coming neighborhood and perfectly safe. I actually looked at some apartments between 100th and 110th Streets earlier this year when I was looking for a new place, and I was not at all happy with them – tiny walkup apartments hardly bigger than a college dorm room for $2000 per month, located on blocks where I’d hesitate to walk late at night? No thanks.
It looks like there are 2 bedroom places in Astoria for $2,000 per month on Craigslist so your D would need a roommate. I forgot to mention that your D will most likely have to pay a broker’s fee for an apartment. These can be as high as 15% of one year’s rent. My D and her roommate found their place and the fee was $1,800 for the broker which was one month’s rent.
You CAN get a studio in NYC for less than $1500. It definitely requires a lot of legwork, but it can be done (I’ve done it twice, both times on the UWS, below 100). Look on Craigslist and other no-broker listings. Yes, it will be tiny and probably in an old building that won’t have a doorman, etc., but it can be done.
Wow, thanks for all the advice. Her boyfriend will be coming and living with her. She has lived in large cities before. She has just moved home this summer after living in Shanghai. I had never heard of a guarantor for a rental before. I guess you can tell we live in a very affordable place to live. Our house mortgage payment is less than these rents! I really, really appreciate everyone’s ideas…keep them coming!
How much is your D’s bf able to pay towards the apartment? They should be able to find a studio or very small 1 bedroom on the UES for around $2,000. Astoria for a 1 bedroom would be cheaper for them. What part of town is her bf working in?
The insistence on guarantors for NYC apartments for people without a real rental history is nothing new: when I rented my first apartment in the summer of 1979 after graduating from law school, my father had to guarantee the first year’s rent. (It was a one-bedroom apartment in a new building on Third Avenue and 72nd Street, and the rent was $688 per month!)
See StreetEasy.com, at http://streeteasy.com/for-rent/astoria/price:1500-2000|beds:1|baths%3E=1 :
“74 Astoria Apartments For Rent - Between $1,500 and $2,000 with 1 bedroom with at least 1 bathroom”
One caveat re Astoria: it’s a very short subway ride to midtown Manhattan (it’s actually elevated out there), but as I learned when I was looking at apartments in Astoria about five years ago, there are some that are quite a long walk from the subway. So it’s important to check the location of any apartment you look at to see how close it is to the subway.
My DD moved back to NYC after living in Hong Kong for a year and was able to arrange a sublet while still in HK through Gypsy Housing. She didn’t want to commit to something indefinite before she was in the City and had time to find something. She found several options in Astoria and has been sub-letting there for a few months. She pays just under $1000/month for her own room with 2 other roommates (3BR/1bath). She is moving to Brooklyn for her own lease soon and will pay $1050 + utilities for a 3 BR with 2 roommates. Her second choice was a 2 BR in Hamilton Heights for $960 + utilities with one roommate. Both look like very nice apartments- Brooklyn is more updated and fairly large, but her room is small. Hamilton Heights is older but still nice with fairly large bedrooms. We did have to co-sign for the new apartment since most of her credit history was outside the US. Her salary is a little higher than that of your daughter but she has been fine budget-wise and is able to put some into savings consistently. She has used Gypsy Housing quite a few times for short sub-lets with good success. .
The UES is easily accessible from the Bronx via the 4, 5, 6 IRT subway lines, with the 4 and 5 running express from 125th St south. You can get 2 br in nice sections of the Bronx off those lines, and it’s about a 30-45 min subway ride to the UES. It’s not a ‘hot’ area, but there are lots of nice neighborhoods in the Bronx. Look on Zillow for rentals.
How old is your daughter? Is this her first full time job? If she is under 26 with a limited job history, this guarantor stuff can be daunting, depending upon neighborhood, etc. When daughter needed guarantor, much paperwork documentation was required of us (letter of employment, bank statement with most recent paycheck deposit, tax records, etc) and they were looking for guarantor income to be 80 times the monthly rent. Google NYC apt. rentals and guarantors to help everyone be prepared.
The good news is that this is a better time of year to be looking and YMMV on being a guarantor. The summer UWS hunt was brutal; finding her decent West Harlem studio ($1500) in November went much more easily. She was 4 blocks north of Central Park and the neighborhood was one we enjoyed visiting.
All the best to her!
D1 plans to move to NYC in two weeks also. She has already tentatively lined up a temporary (six weeks’) rental of a room in an apartment in Brooklyn. She found this on Craigslist. D2 moved to NYC in late June. She lives in Brooklyn and works in the Financial District. She shares a three-bedroom apartment with two roommates. She found this opportunity through her college’s alumni Facebook group. It has not been without problems; they just got mail service two weeks ago, and their gas service will finally be hooked up on Thursday of this week. The management has not been easy to work with.
My daughter found all her housing – in NYC, Brooklyn, Washington DC and Boston – through friends of friends via Facebook. If she hasn’t already, OP’s daughter should certainly send word on FB that she’s looking.
Having all this paperwork on hand can be key, because apartments can go fast. My son got his apartment over other applicants because he was ready with this material.
My daughter also recently moved to NYC. She mostly used Craigslist and gypsy housing – you can find gypsy housing on Facebook; there are some open groups but my daughter used a by-invitation-only group (getting the invite was easy). If your daughter is thinking about subletting or temporary housing while she figures things out, gypsy housing is great; there are also more permanent listings.
Finding an apartment for herself will be daunting. Apartments go fast. Brokers are expensive. She’ll need a guarantor. One of our NYC friends warned my daughter that when it comes to real estate in NYC, don’t trust anyone. Landlords will be juggling several possible tenants at once, just as renters may be negotiating several apartments at once. (He was right.) If you want a sense of the NY real estate market, look up The Hunt column in the NYTimes.
My daughter wanted a room in someone else’s apartment. She looked at dozens of rooms, on the Upper West Side, Harlem, Hamilton Heights and north. Many rooms came with some furniture (she ended up with a dresser, desk and two bookcases – just needed to buy a bed). My point is, don’t worry about the furniture until she figures out where she’s living.
Even renting a room in someone else’s place isn’t cheap – she saw one rent-controlled apartment that was jaw-droppingly cheap ($550), but most rooms started around $800/month and went up from there. And she was looking in a not very desirable location. I’ll second Astoria as an option. If your daughter is thinking about the hip places to live, like the lower East Side, Greenwich Village, Williamsburg – those places are really really expensive (friends just rented a 500 SF studio in the village for $2700/month).
As long as people are suggesting different neighborhoods, I’ll throw in a mention of Washington Heights: less expensive than most other Manhattan neighborhoods, comparatively safe (especially west of Broadway and north of 181st Street), and very convenient to the midtown and downtown West Side via the A train. My two-bedroom apartment is at least twice the size of the Village studio that fireandrain mentions, for a couple of hundred dollars less per month. And I lived for five years before this year in a large one-bedroom that was less than $2000 per month.