How To Find An Apartment In NYC
Tips and advice on finding your New York City apartment
I remember my first time trying to find an apartment in New York City, I felt miserable and confused. I have so many stories where I show up to apartments that didn’t match up with the photos posted online by the broker. Some apartments did not even have a ceiling installed. Yes, an apartment that did not have a ceiling. Many stories of me showing up and the apartment unit was dirty but still costs about $3,000, someone showing me a studio but telling me it’s a one bedroom or a junior one bedroom. I did not know about broker’s fee. I didn’t understand the difference between net effective rent versus gross rent. I was so confused and I didn’t understand what I should be looking for.
I never anticipated that finding an apartment in a city like New York would be so complicated. That process is so convoluted, it is so complex and sometimes can be daunting. Each summer there’s a huge influx of people moving to the city, trying to find new apartments. All these dreamers come into the city, wanting to find a new spot to be in the midst of it all. At the same time, you just have a group of people that already live in the city and are looking to move to a new burrough and have a fresh start.
With the summer rush ahead, I sat down with broker Jason Christie from the Polaris NYC team to get some tips and insights on how to best find an apartment in New York. From the time you’re searching to the time you sign the lease, he drops a lot of great gems. I wish you luck, you need a lot of luck to find an apartment in New York, it is very convoluted, it is very complex. I hope this conversation provides you with the information needed once you begin your apartment search in New York.
So let’s start from the top, from your experience, when someone is new to the city, what needs to be done to understand or start thinking about finding an apartment in New York?
Jason Christie: You know, I’ll say that preparation is the name of the game, actually, whether you’re a newcomer or a seasoned veteran preparation, preparation, preparation. Renting an apartment in New York City is almost like purchasing a home in many other parts of the country, as far as the vetting process is concerned. So you want to make sure that you have your paperwork in order. And by that, I mean, just assume that it’s going to be a competitive process and that there’ll be other people interested in the apartment that you’re interested in for the same reasons. And you don’t want to lose any time getting prepared and after you find the apartment you like.
So before you even begin searching, just have all your documents in order and by that, I mean the usual stuff, a letter of employment from your employer that states your salary, your last two bank statements. your last couple of pay stubs, have some professional references, have some personal references, have a letter from your landlord wherever you are now, if that’s available.
A good tip is to have all of that information in digital format like a Google Drive. So if you find something you love and you’re in the apartment, you can send that broker a link to that drive and have all of your documents sent to them right away. That can make all the difference in you securing the apartment that you really want or losing it.
I remember my first apartment search. I was new, I tried to look everywhere, I looked at 40 apartments. And it was literally crazy, it was winter time and I was moving around the whole city. I did not know if a specific neighborhood gave me something different or what I should be thinking about. Are there certain core components in terms of just the living part of the city itself? Or a list of priorities you usually find your clients have?
Jason Christie: Yeah, that’s a really good question. During normal times people always wanted proximity to work. So let’s use Manhattan as an example and let’s assume that your corporate offices are in Midtown, everyone’s corporate offices are in the heart of Midtown. So everybody wants to be near that neighborhood for work purposes, it’s a major transportation hub. So all of the apartments in that geographic epicenter are going to be super expensive for all of those reasons.
Your proximity to work might be the most important thing to you because who wants a long commute. But you might get a reality check when you realize the closest apartments to where you work is way out of your budget. So then you do what everyone else does, you start figuring out how long of a commute are you willing to accept and where the overlap is for the rent prices. And that usually gives you the radius of where you want to live.
Price and location go hand in hand and then the rest is really very specific to the person. What kind of lifestyle you want, do you want to live in a quiet tree-lined community, or do you want to live in a more commercial neighborhood, or do you want to live near parks, do you want to live near the clubs and the restaurants?
Now because of COVID, I think what people are looking for more than anything is private outdoor space. People aren’t traveling to work anymore, so commuting is gone and everyone wants to be outside. So private outdoor space is huge and also more interior space are by far the most popular amenities right now.
Generally speaking, the more amenities the neighborhood has, the higher their rents can be, because people like amenity rich neighborhoods. So like an abundance of cafes and restaurants where you have brunch and lunch and places where you can have wine after work or bars and pubs and other eateries. People love being close to those things, so for that reason prices in those neighborhoods tend to be higher.
When a neighborhood is gentrifying and services begin to multiply, that’s also when you see the rents start to go up. People like to live close to those amenities, so it’s definitely a variable for sure.
When I started searching for an apartment, someone told me, well, you can use a broker. And so I started going down the route of a broker, but then learned something called a broker’s fee. I have lived in Indiana, Columbus, Ohio, and Maryland and DC and never once in trying to rent an apartment did I think I have to use a broker. Could you explain the usage of a broker in finding an apartment?
Jason Christie: Yeah, so broker’s fee, like no one wants to pay broker’s fees when you’re renting an apartment. No one does and I never wanted to when I was renting either. They can all add up. In a typical scenario, you are paying first month’s rent, the security, and if you’re renting an apartment that’s in a condominium building or in a co-op building, then there’s going to be another application fee, that can be up to thousands of dollars.
I’ve done rental applications where in order to move into a $3,000 rental in Harlem, the person had to come up with $13,000 in cash for rent, security and all the fees. So it really, really, really can add up and I get it, but here’s why you pay the broker’s fee in a strong or up market. Because if you are looking at a commercial landlord that has dozens and dozens of buildings that he needs to rent, he has to hire someone to answer the phones, answer the emails, make the appointments, and show the apartment around. Or let’s say you buy an apartment and you have to leave the city and you don’t want to sell the apartment, you want to rent it out and keep it. Now you’re a landlord, you’re not there to show the apartment, you’re not there to answer the phones and all the emails.
Again, someone has to do the work, so brokers like everybody else on the planet get paid for the work that they do. They get paid for the amount of time that they spend doing the work and they get paid for all the various tasks associated with doing the work.
Now who pays the broker’s fee changes depending on the market. The landlords don’t have to pay the broker’s fee because everybody wants their apartment and they can make someone else pay it. They’re not going to pay them; they’re going to make you pay it. If it’s a strong market, that’s what happens, in a COVID market where you can’t give away some apartments in Manhattan, landlords have to pay the fees. And more than that, not only do they have to pay the broker’s fees, but they have to offer incentives, free rent, free breakfast for a year, free gym, and anything they can do to entice you the tenant.
Who pays the broker depends on the market.
Is there more benefits in going with a broker and finding an apartment versus not?
Yes, so the caveat I’m going to use here is assuming you have a good broker who knows what the heck they’re doing. Let’s be honest, there are a lot of brokers who don’t deserve the fee. There are other brokers who very much deserve the fee, so let’s assume that you’re working with someone who deserves the fee. That person is going to save you time, that person is going to save you money.
Especially if you’re brand new to the city, they’re going to use their expertise to make sure that you don’t wind up living in the middle of Midtown on 37th and 8th. Like, they’re going to tell you here’s why that’s not a good idea. So they’re going to help your quality of life be better from the jump.
They’re going to make sure that whoever’s on the other side of your lease agreement, doesn’t pull anything shady or pull any fast ones on you.
I want to go with a broker — are there some key questions or evaluation as you ask a broker to know if they are a good choice or not?
Jason Christie: Yeah, I’ll give you a couple of questions that you can ask to vet your broker. But I think it’s actually the other way around, I think a good broker is going to spend a lot of time asking you a ton of questions. The more they ask these discovery questions, the psychological questions, the emotional questions, the more they get to know you and what you’re looking for and the emotions behind your desires. Like what’s really driving what you’re looking for emotionally, that’s going to let you know that they’re going to take those data points.
They’re going to take all that information and to apply to the search. So that they’re not going to come back to you with apartments that look crazy that you would never want to live in. Because they’ve taken the time upfront to really get to know you as a person and to figure out what’s really important to you emotionally and psychologically.
That’s one really big way to see whether or not your broker is going to be really good. If they just say hi, yeah, sure, I can help you, what’s your budget and then they hang up the phone, alarms should sound. But some good questions you can ask your broker when you’re vetting them, one might be obviously,
- How long that they’ve been in the business. You want to ask them how many transactions they do in a typical month or quarter or a year that will give some ideas of their expertise.
- This is a very important question, ask the broker, if they are the exclusive agent on the listing or not.
What does it mean to be an exclusive broker on an apartment listing and why is it important?
Jason Christie : If a landlord has an exclusive agency agreement with a broker means nobody else is allowed to advertise that apartment anywhere else and nobody else is allowed to try to rent that apartment, other than that exclusive agent that the landlord has hired. It’s an employment contract and exclusive agreement.
There are brokers who pretend that they are the exclusive broker for apartments. Meanwhile, they’ve never spoken to the landlord, they’ve never been inside the apartment, they’ve never been inside the building. They may have never even been to that neighborhood, they may not even live in the city, they’re coming in from Long Island. So another good question to ask them where they live and they’re just out there trying to make a buck. They’re hustling and grinding.
If you hire a renters broker, someone who is going to present you exclusively, that person is going to know how to make sure they’re dealing with the right person. In fact, they probably have relationships already with the real exclusive agents from the neighborhood. And that’s another way that a professional broker earns their keep, they have the real relationships.
That’s very interesting. So when you look at apartment search apps like StreetEasy and Renthub, you kind of see the same apartments on those sites, but sometimes you have different people listing them.
Jason Christie: This is how those sites work — So my friend is the landlord, I have the relationship, I’m paying the photographers to take pictures. I’m paying StreetEasy $5 every day for the privilege of putting an ad on Street Easy’s website. When I put that out on StreetEasy’s website, they do not make sure that you contact me when you look at my apartment. Because any gent from anywhere in the boroughs can pay streetEasy a monthly fee to make their names come up on my listings. So it looks like it’s theirs, so it’s tricky, it’s a money-making scheme. You just have to be sure that you’re contacting the listing agent by scrolling to the bottom and looking for that language.
StreetEasy is good because everyone uses them, which means they have a lot of inventory. So the chances that you’re going to miss something are very small because they usually have almost everything. Compass.com is a good place to begin your search too.
We’ve gone through the pre-process, we have our location, we’re clear on our priorities, whether we want the nightlife or quiet scene. We’ve decided we want to go to the broker or not go with a broker. So we’re looking at apartments now, as we look at apartments, are there questions we should be asking?
Jason Christie: Yeah, so beyond the obvious, like there are no visible signs of water leaks anywhere. There’s no smell of mold in the air, there’s a reasonable amount of light, it’s not on a 15th floor walk-up. Those things aside good questions are:
- What the previous rent was on the unit
- You can ask them how much the rent has gone up year over year, the last two to three years, that’ll give you some indication where your rent might go the next year.
- If you want to stay in the apartment, you want to ask if the landlord lives in the building, that’s a very good thing to know.
- Pay attention, if there’s a school on the block, especially if you’re working from home nowadays because of COVID and schools are back in session. And there’s a bunch of like kids outside, during recess that can get annoying really quickly.
- You want to ask if it’s a pet friendly building, maybe you want to have a pet. But maybe there’s also like a really loud barking dog next door. So if things like noise control are really important to you, then you want to ask those questions also, which may not be totally obvious.
- Ask if it’s a rental building or like a condominium building or a co-op building. A rental building, all of the apartments are for rent and a landlord is one person or a business entity owns the whole building. Which means everyone in there are renters, there are no homeowners. That has some quality of life implications because in my experience, renters do not take care of the property as well as homeowners do. So in a condominium building or a co-op building, everyone owns there and they take better care of the building and the apartments and the quality of life everyone thinks about it more. There’s more of a sense of community and pride, more fees though, that’s the trade off more fees.
Could please explain the difference between net effective versus gross rent?
Jason Christie: It’s basically a creative way for landlords to get you into the apartment and net effective rent means they’re giving you something for free, usually like a month or free rent. So let’s say the apartment is a thousand dollars a month and they say, we’re going to give you two months of free rent. That means they’re giving you a credit of $2,000. It doesn’t mean January is going to be free and February is going to be free. You’re going to be paying rent every month, but because now $2,000 credit is going to be divided over a 12 month period, every monthly payment is now reduced. That is a net effective rent.
Some landlords will say, I’m going to give you that $2,000 credit. So you’re only going to pay the net rent every month, so instead of paying, a thousand dollars every month, January through December. You’re going to wind up paying like $950 a month or whatever, $850 a month instead that’s the net effective rent and that’s what you’ll pay. That is the most generous possibility, the other possibility is that they’ll say, I’m just going to give you your last two months free. So you’re going to come, you’re going to keep paying your rent, that full thousand dollars every month and then maybe like November and December, I’ll give you those last two months free.
Is there a specific strategy when it comes to negotiating rent?
Jason Christie: Yeah, basically they will negotiate if they have to, or if they want to. They will want to negotiate with you if you were the kind of tenant that they want in their building. So if you have excellent income that meets the rental guidelines and in New York city, the standard is your annual income should be 40 times the monthly rent. So if it’s a $2,000 apartment, your annual income should be $80,00 dollars a year. If you meet the income, you have a great credit score and there’s no history of you not paying your rent, they are going to want you in the apartment. And because they want you — use that to your advantage and negotiate. Only if you’re strong on paper, if you’re weak on paper then they won’t negotiate with you.
Assuming you have good income and good credit, ask for everything you want, ask for everything and anything your little heart can think of and desire in this covid market. There’s a ton of inventory and tenants have so many options, the power right now is yours.This is a fantastic time to rent in New York City, great discounts, great incentives.
We have viewed our apartment, we’re ready, we’ve talked about rent and we are to sign the lease. Are there things we should be looking for as a renter to make sure it’s in the lease and we’re clear on in the lease?
Jason Christie: You want to make sure that the term is right, obviously, you want to make sure that utilities are included or not included, that’s obviously a big one. And that there are no hidden fees, those are the most important ones. So fees, rents, and terms.
Renter’s insurance versus no renter’s insurance?
Jason Christie: Do it, it’s so cheap. What are you going to spend like $25 bucks a month for like a half, a million dollars in coverage or something ridiculous. Do it! Should a radiator break in your apartment and your rug gets ruined — your landlord is probably not going to help you out with that. But your renter’s insurance will. Increasingly you don’t have the choice, most landlords are requiring that you pay for renter’s insurance.
Good luck on your apartment search and in finding a home in the beautiful big apple.
Be Kind to yourself.
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You can listen to the related podcast on City Living With Churchill
Jason Christie is the lead on Polaris Team, his email is jason@thepolaristeam.com. You can checkout thepolaristeamnyc.com to see his listings and contact information. His business is evenly divided between sales and leases, new development, and resale. Usually with the landlords and the sellers but also work with buyers and renters.
