I'm glad to report that my wife and I were successful in finding and getting an apartment for our move to New York at the end of the month. After looking both with and without brokers (more in a bit) in Manhattan, we made our way to Queens and found a beauty of an apartment in the Astoria neighborhood.
Here's a street in the area:
For those unfamiliar with the process of apartment hunting in New York City, it's not the easiest thing to do on a five-day trip. Because of rental laws, just about everything is in favor of the tenant as opposed to the landlord, so the latter make it very difficult to rent, in order to protect their interests. The first, and biggest, impediment is brokers. Most landlords use brokers to find tenants, and those brokers charge fees, usually one to two months rent. Given that brokers can only show apartments in buildings they're hired for, it's recommended to look with more than one broker to open up the options available. But if you see a place you like and don't take it then and there, that apartment will almost certainly be gone the next day, considering that New York City has a rental vacancy rate of less than 2%.
It is possible to find an apartment in New York City without a broker, by dealing directly with the landlord (usually via sites like Craigslist and the Village Voice), but the quality of apartments tend to be lower, and the "no fee" apartments go much faster than "broker fee" ones, as just about everybody else apartment hunting is looking to bypass that extra fee. So we met with a broker and saw a place we liked and took it. Relieved, now we have one less thing to worry about.
*According to Bart Simpson, who falls off a roof after a celebration dance for the retrieval of a toy plane.
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