Apartment Hunting for NYC big law Forum

[Anonymous User]

With a 2k/mo budget where do you find studios in Manhattan (don't want to venture to a different suburb) when you have little liquid cash so can't pay a broker? Is 2k realistic for a rundown studio?

[ForgotMyPassword]

This is a weird question to ask anon, but ok. 2k is doable, but you have to make sacrifices on either location, size, or how nice it is overall. You'll likely get some great advice, so I'll just throw in that the key here is the subway and your apartment / firms location to it.

My highly limited personal experience is that west harlem (Below about 125th) is a great place to get a cheaper apartment. You'll likely get advice to also look in Brooklyn, which I would take. Maybe there are some studios for 2K on the UWS, but I don't know how nice they'd be.

Good luck!

[kaiser]

With a 2k/mo budget where do you find studios in Manhattan (don't want to venture to a different suburb) when you have little liquid cash so can't pay a broker? Is 2k realistic for a rundown studio?

In what general neighborhood is your firm located?

[Anonymous User]

Midtown west - I would rather have a smaller place in Manhattan than a nicer place elsewhere. Location is more important to me.

[dixiecupdrinking]

$2k isn't going to get you anything much in the locations you're probably thinking about though. Better off going to Queens or uptown at that price.

[thesealocust]

OP: Keep in mind that even without a broker, you're likely to need a lot of cash to rent an apartment in NYC (fist/last months rent and/or security deposit).

If you can find a roommate, stuyvesant town can work and is easy to do without a broker, but that's not a great commute.

This is a weird question to ask anon

Anything you write that ties your TLS account to a school, region, firm, practice area, time, etc. runs the risk of outing you creepy-law-student-stalkers.

[Hutz_and_Goodman]

Would you consider a roommate? You can get a 2 bedroom in good location for $3000-3500 total.

[beautyistruth]

Last I checked, you can find things in that price rage on the Upper East Side if you're willing to walk 10 minutes to a subway every day. The UES has a weird transportation system where there's only one line that runs through it, as opposed to the UWS, which has several, so anything away from the 6 line starts dropping dramatically in price. Walking 10 minutes a day to the subway in the winter sounds miserable, though.

[gchatbrah]

Should really consider Queens. Recently got a decent-sized 1br, right off the NQR in Astoria, for 2150. 20 minutes to GCT, so i imagine you'd only have to add 10 minutes to your commute for midtown west.

[Anonymous User]

Yeah I want to do UWS for this reason, as well as personal reasons. Getting cross town takes much longer than getting up/downtown.

Edit - don't want to do queens, only UWS. I'd prefer a shack on the UWS to a castle in Astoria. Is only want a roommate who also is in big law so they can understand the hours. Even college friends will be too risky with their having fulfilling social lives and all.

[legends159]

Tough to do this without a broker - many online postings you'll see will be posted by brokers and they'll want a fee. Renting through the landlord is tough as many will exclusively use brokers to screen for them so calling them will get you nowhere. It's doable but not easy, especially in MFH. Plus you might end up paying more in rent by not going through a broker or getting an apt where owner pays the fees. Using a broker is not the end of the world if you can get them to lower their fees to one month's rent (they'll start with 15% but most settle for 12%; 1 month would be perfect but not likely possible if they have exclusive listing).

If you're working biglaw - won't your firm foot the broker's fee up to a certain amount (note that you'll pay tax on this though).

[Anonymous User]

West Harlem is a great area and still relatively affordable. Great food choices around and cool vibe (i.e. way more chill than the rest of NYC). Highly recommend and its easy to hit the 1, C or B

[Anonymous User]

Didn't think the firm would - now I will look into this, though I'd still prefer to not have a broker (I'd rather my firm have money than a random third party). Don't want to say too much without outing myself but for cultural reasons I need to be on the UWS (Anywhere from 70-105).

[Anonymous User]

The neighborhood south of 110 and north of 96th, especially W of Broadway, is your best bet.

[legends159]

Didn't think the firm would - now I will look into this, though I'd still prefer to not have a broker (I'd rather my firm have money than a random third party). Don't want to say too much without outing myself but for cultural reasons I need to be on the UWS (Anywhere from 70-105).

If you've never lived in MFH or looked for an apt there you'll be in for a helluva surprise trying to do this without a broker. Where are you living in the meantime while you're looking for a place? Are you able to check out places at the drop of a dime as the market moves very quickly in MFH?

[legends159]

Also, here's some things about living situation that mattered a lot to me when I was in biglaw and things I didn't care about. It was helpful to send this list to a broker who could narrow down the search for me so I wasn't running around the city chasing leads.

What mattered
1. Location. Less than 5 min walk to subway station was critical. I actually lived a block away. Fuck the summers and winters and rainy days in between. And no fucking way I'm doing bus to train. Early on I decided that I made too much money to penny pinch on this - would rather spend less on clothes/restaurants/going out etc.

2. Commute Time. 20 minutes or less door to door. I can't tell you how many times I needed that extra bit of sleep after getting home at 3 AM and needed to get back into the office for a closing at 9 AM. Google maps can give a decent approximate of travel time to the office.

3. Wash & Fold. If there's one nearby that's pretty cheap (i.e., $1/lb) that's pretty clutch. Not doing my own laundry when I have so little personal time. I liked dropping off before work and then picking it up after work. You really don't save much doing your own laundry if you can get wash and fold for $1/lb.

4. Neighbors. This one is a little tricky but I tried to live in a building with older folks; preferably ones without young families. Don't want a baby waking me up in the middle of the night or kids stomping around upstairs (I have kids - I know how bad they are for neighbors). Old folks are quiet and boring, sometimes a little nosy, but otherwise make great neighbors.

5. Size. I didn't need a giant place at first as I didn't have kids when I started biglaw and my spouse and I lived in other shoeboxes in the past so we were OK with MFH shoeboxes. However, I did need enough space to have a work station. Logging in from home is critical, especially on weekends. I needed a large monitor and a printer/scanner so needed space to put that on a desk.


What didn't matter

1. Amenities. I already have a gym membership, don't need to pay a premium to have that in the building. Ok with a walk-up as we're young (and childless at the time). Don't need a doorman as we didn't live in a sketch area. Don't need great views as we're there to sleep mostly anyway. Don't need laundry in the building as I'm doing wash & fold. These are all things you'll pay extra for - I'd add $100 - $200 per month for each amenity you'd like.

2. Neighborhood. Cab/uber made it easy to go anywhere if necessary to hang out. Plus it's MFH, pretty much every neighborhood had something going for it. As far as safety is concerned, it was important but anything within a 20 minute commute to a biglaw firm will be in a safe area anyway.

3. Grocery stores. Not going to sacrifice the above to be near a grocery store. I did seamless on most nights and even if I got home early I wasn't going to buy groceries that would go bad since my schedule was so unpredictable.

Hope this helps. I quickly gave up trying to find an apt in MFH without a broker when the couple of places I went to that were advertised as "no-fee" or "owner-listed" all ended up being listed by a broker anyway. That really ticked me off because I did all the work to find the place and then I needed to pay a fee just to rent the damn place. At least when you start with a broker you have that person work you from the get-go and line up 10 places to look at in one day and help with the applications etc.

[Anonymous User]

OP - Firm doesn't reimburse for a brokers fee. I agree with laundry, and would want somewhere close to the gym and wash and fold laundry. I completely agree on commute time and laundry. I'm a fairly simple guy in that I don't need beautiful things to be happy so am fine with the shoebox. The way I see it is I paid sticker for law school so I'm not in a position to live like a king, but there's a lot of value to me in time and keeping my sanity with friends, hobbies and women especially because summering I learned that having time for these 3 things makes me a much better worker and better able to fit into the office culture.

[dixiecupdrinking]

Ok but you will still need approx $6-7k in cash for broker, deposit, first month. There's really no way around that. Especially in Manhattan, pretty much everything halfway decent is listed by a broker.

[Anonymous User]

I live in Long Island City, Queens, and it was the best choice ever. I pay 2,500 for a really large apartment with a bunch of high end amenities, and I'm in my office in about 25 minutes door to door. I also work in Midtown.

[Anonymous User]

2k is going to be tough for the location in which you are looking.

I pay around that (split that with my spouse, actually), but commute around 30 minutes door to door, and have a nice, new 1 bedroom outside of Manhattan.

I've commuted my entire time in biglaw.

Biggest upside: Paying off all of my loans within 2-3 years and saving up some cash on top of that.
Downside: Obviously on late nights, commuting is going to suck.

Nothing else really mattered. I eat out every meal (don't cook), don't care what dry cleaners I use, don't care about amenities, etc. I do my own laundry (I have a washer/dryer in my apt unit) on the weekends. I also have never paid a broker's fee, as I only looked at new buildings run by management companies.

I think it depends on how much you owe. The faster you pay off loans, the more flexibility you'll have to do something else, but you'll have to sacrifice some QOl for the commute.

I don't regret my decision, but now that I have some decent cash saved up, I'm thinking of moving within 5 minutes walking distance to work.

[Anonymous User]

I actually found a place for $1400 but it's basically a shack with a broker's fee (can probably negotiate down to one month). I'm viewing it later today. I figure with only 17k in rent a year, I could allocate 60k a year to loans easily. Another option is a luxury building with a gym and everything for $2300 with no fee. If the gym is free I wouldn't need to pay an extra 150 dollar/month for the company luxury gym so the price difference between the nice sized luxury apartment and dump will be more like $600 a month or $7200 a year.

[thesealocust]

$1,400 per month in Manhattan for a studio is... only possible in truly horrifying circumstances and/or fake ads used to sucker you into using a particular broker.

Like, I'm imagining a closet in a subway tunnel several dozen blocks north of Central Park.

[legends159]

I actually found a place for $1400 but it's basically a shack with a broker's fee (can probably negotiate down to one month). I'm viewing it later today. I figure with only 17k in rent a year, I could allocate 60k a year to loans easily. Another option is a luxury building with a gym and everything for $2300 with no fee. If the gym is free I wouldn't need to pay an extra 150 dollar/month for the company luxury gym so the price difference between the nice sized luxury apartment and dump will be more like $600 a month or $7200 a year.

Do the 2,300 a year place. Biglaw will be tough, don't make your life worse by living in a shit hole. You'll probably end up moving after a year in that $1,400 crap hole and then will have to pay another broker's fee.

$7,200 a year will not make or break your loan repayment plan. Your bonus after taxes will be roughly that amount.

[Anonymous User]

How much are studios and one bedrooms in fidi? I'd like to walk to work

[Publius25]

Try Washington Heights just above Columbia Presbyterian. I know someone who sub let a great 1 br apt over the summer on 173 and Broadway. Totally redone large lr, large br nice kitchen with all stainless and granite, nice bath. $1700/mo including utilities except cable tv. No ac but space for window units. A bit Dominican, but safe and mixed gentry and regular residents. Express trains into Rockefellar center.