TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

I watched the 2nd Episode. I’m still not sure but it wins another episode.

As it’s getting close to October, Ms. L and I have finally started contacting some apartment brokers to get some idea of what we’ll get when we move. One thing that two years have wiped for my memory is that apartment brokers tend to be a lot about as trustworthy as used car salesmen. One quick run around Craig’s list reminded me of this as I find apartments listed as Upper East or West side when they’re in Harlem, Queens, or New Jersey, oversized studios listed as one bedrooms, and Ye Olde Bait’n'Switch.

For readers who haven’t dealt with the city, an apartment broker is a real estate agent that deals in apartments. Buildings list their apartments with the broker. The broker deals with filling the apartment. The broker gets a fee. The broker’s fee is usually 15% of the annual rent of the apartment. Therefore, if the broker finds you an apartment worth $2000/month the annual rent is $24,000, so you owe the broker $3600. Some buildings do this, some buildings don’t… buildings that do list their apartments exclusively through a broker. Why buildings do this I really have no idea. The broker is an all right way to go. They do most of the leg-work and are supposed to show you apartments that fit your budget.

So, this first broker I found in the The Village Voice. I was going through the apartment listings in the print version and stumbled across a number attached to a few underpriced-looking apartments. I Googled the number to see if it came up as a scam and it led me to the website for New York City Apartments, Inc. A quick web-search reveals a bunch of apartments with decent floor space for under $2000. The website promises that they’re the “best no-fee and rent stabilized apartment broker in the city.” Well, fine then. Rent stabilized apartments tend to be a little cheaper than the regular deal so I figured it was worth a call.

So we went to the office to meet with one of the brokers. I told him our budget and what we were looking for. He mentioned that the rental market is very tight right now and what we were looking for would be tough. “But,” I ask. “There were a list of apartments on your website right in our price range. A whole lot of them, actually. Like… 84 of them to be exact. They let us know that the Manhattan rental market changes quickly and availability changes rapidly. Strike 1.

So we sit down and start discussing what we want. One bedroom, preferably dishwasher, preferably elevator, somewhere between $1700-$2200. They send us out with a junior agent who brings us up into the far reaches of the Upper East Side. I was bright enough to bring the camera but not bright enough to make sure it had batteries.

Apartment One: East 72nd Street, Apt 8

Summed up by the following conversation:

Ms L: Where’s the shower?
Agent: In the bathroom.
Ms L: Yeah, that’s the first place I looked.
Me: It has no shower.
Agent: It must have a shower.
Me: No wonder it’s empty.

The smallish place, roughly 2,000 miles from the nearest subway line had a small living room and a small bedroom connected by an exposed kitchen. And no shower. And they were still looking for about $1700/month for it. Strike 2. This led to the following conversation with my friend Mike:

Me: It had no shower. Not only that but the broker made us wait half-an-hour past our appointment. I thought she was going to kill him.
Mike: The creepy part is that, not only would I not be surprised if she’d killed him, I’d be surprised if her heart rate broke 77.
Me: It is New York, I think the NYPD would understand. “Officer, he showed us an apartment with no shower in the middle of the work day.”
Mike: “Carry on, ma’am. We’ll call in the clean-up crew.”

Apartment Two: East 72nd Street, Apt 13, $1800/month

Same building but a higher floor and a little larger. Bonus: it had a shower. Unfortunately it was trashed with clothes. Matter of fact, it looked like someone was getting ready to move out. Ms. L smacked down the immediate kaybosh.

Apartment Three: East 89th Street, Apt B13, $2395/month

Hey, look at that. The first apartment they show us that’s really worth looking into was more than our budget. Not only that, but a fee! Color me shocked. We actually liked this apartment. It boasted a decent-sized living room on the 4th floor. The front window overlooked the back of the building, which was a collection of small backyards. The kitchen was a tiny stove and refrigerator with no dishwasher. Down the hallway was a tiny bedroom featuring the only bathroom in the house. This was the best apartment we saw all day, but the bathroom being located through the bedroom was kind of put-offish. We actually considered getting this apartment for a few minutes today until someone pointed out that if we divided out the broker fee, it would work out to be about $2600/month for the extent of a one-year lease.

So out of curiosity, I went back to the website and, lo and behold, the same 84 apartments were returned in my search results… surprisingly the Manhattan Real Estate market had changed quickly enough that the same apartments that were available on Thursday but not on Friday were back on the Market come Tuesday. Imagine my surprise.

Next plan: meander through TriBeCa and Downtown to see if I find random “Apartment Available” signs.