EVERYBODY IN THE POOL: The amenity-laden Strata at Mercedes House offers incentives including two months’ rent and the broker’s fee. (Christian Johnson)
BLOOM’S DAY: Bloom62, an 81-unit, six-story building in the East Village, features a 15,000-square-foot landscaped outdoor space. (Katherine Marks)
Delving into NYC’s rental scene can, for a first-timer, feel a bit like Little Red Riding Hood negotiating an untamed German forest.
You’re in unfamiliar areas. Wolfish landlords and brokers are eyeing you and licking their lips. And you’ll wind up spending a scary amount of money. (OK, the last one isn’t out of Red Riding Hood. But it’s nevertheless true.)
Take heart, Red. The Post is coming to the rescue with answers to your many rental questions and concerns.
Q: How much is this going to cost?
Prices are high. You might as well accept it. In Citi Habitats’ July rental report, the vacancy rate for Manhattan rentals was 1.28 percent. To channel Larry David for a moment: That’s pretty, pretty low. And the average price of a studio (Manhattan-wide) is $2,103, which is pretty, pretty high. If you were banking on bargaining your dream apartment down in price, you might have to come up with a plan B.
Q: Don’t new buildings offer incentives to move people in?
If you’ve heard stories about buildings that offer to pick up the broker’s fee (which can be more than a month’s rent) or give a month’s free rent (sometimes two!), we’re here to tell you that, yes, the legends are true. But they are also much rarer than they used to be. According to Citi Habitats’ market report, the number of apartments market-wide offering concessions was 6 percent last month. “During the downturn,” says Gary Malin, president of Citi Habitats, “they were 60 percent.”
Q: So, which places are offering the incentives?
Strata at Mercedes House, on West 54th Street, is offering to pay a broker’s fee and two months’ rent. (But the rents are high: One-bedrooms start at $5,350.)
More affordable Manhattan options: Uptown’s 1214 Fifth Ave. (where rents start at $3,995 for an alcove studio) is offering to cover a month’s rent plus the broker fee on two-bedrooms and one month free or the broker’s fee on studios and one-bedrooms based on availability, and Bloom62 (62 Ave. B), where one-bedrooms start at $3,250, is picking up a month’s rent. At 254 Front St. and 40 Gold St., in FiDi, the buildings are mostly leased up, but remaining units are both offering one month free.
For some places it depends on what’s in stock, like One MiMA Tower (with studios starting at $3,495), which is offering a month free or a broker’s fee on studios and one-bedrooms, or a month free and a broker’s fee on two-bedrooms, based on availability.
Q: Aren’t there any apartments out there for under $2,000 per month?
While you can get lucky and find an incredible deal in a prime neighborhood, that’s not something to bank on. Consider expanding beyond Manhattan. (Or, if you’re determined to stay on the island, Inwood, Harlem and Washington Heights are calling your name.) Prime neighborhoods in the outer boroughs have shot up in price, but there are still apartments in Queens neighborhoods like Astoria, Sunnyside and Jackson Heights, and Brooklyn neighborhoods like Windsor Terrace, Prospect Heights, Clinton Hill and even a modest one-bedroom in Williamsburg, at the $2,000 mark and under. There are even new buildings, like the Westbourne in Manhattanville — a prewar building that was recently restored — where the rents start at $1,600 per month for a one-bedroom. Of all the real estate websites to search listings, one of our favorites is RentHop.com, a site founded by a couple of self-professed Ivy League data geeks, which ranks apartments on the basis of bang for the buck and quality of the building and/or landlord.
Q: Where are the new buildings with the swimming pools and bocce ball courts?
There’s no lack of buildings that pile on the amenities: 101 Bedford, for example, is centrally located in Williamsburg, and offers a pool, gym, wine vault, screening room and more (studios start at $2,500). In the same nabe is Williamsburg Social, which has 7,500 square feet of amenity space (studios start at $2,650 per month, and the building is offering one month’s rent). Long Island City also has several big draws: All along the water are humongous rental towers, the newest of which, 4545 Center Blvd., has 50,000 square feet of amenities (studios start at $2,295). And there are more coming this summer including LINC LIC, which will feature parking, a roof deck with barbecue grill and a grocery store, with apartments at a slightly lower price point (studios start at $2,060), and the newly opened 199-unit Gantry Park Landing features condo-level finishes (studios start at $2,100, with no broker’s fee and one month free).
Q: So, I stopped by an open house and really love the apartment — now what?
“Be prepared with all the necessary documentation,” advises Andrew Barrocas, founder of MNS. “One of the things we require people have ready are tax returns . . . and all their guarantor paperwork.” If you’re just out of school and starting a job, a letter of employment (including your salary) will be necessary; if you’re self-employed, get a letter from a CPA attesting how long you’ve owned your own business and what you make each year. If you need your parents to guarantee the apartment, make sure you have all the paperwork in hand before you start looking. And one should be prepared for the fact that not every landlord takes a guarantor that’s not from the tri-state area.
Q: But I don’t have anybody to be a guarantor!
If your landlord insists you don’t make enough to afford his crummy studio or you don’t want to get your parents involved, Barrocas advises taking a look at Insurent. “A lot of first-time renters are opting for this. It guarantees your lease payment. It’s like buying insurance for auto or renter’s insurance.” (For someone with a decent credit score, it should cost less than a month’s rent.) There are other options, too, for the guarantor-less renter. “You can put up additional security, or a year’s rent up front,” says Roberta Axelrod, director of condo sales and rentals for Time Equities.
Q: What about the roommate route?
We like the way you think! “Even if you might not have any close friends in New York, friends of friends” are better to live with than strangers, advises Malin. Use Facebook, or other social-networking sites, to ask if anybody’s looking around the city for roommates.
Q: How do I know if I’ve stumbled upon a too-good-to-be-true apartment?
“A building that has a lot of vacancies is not a good sign,” warns Adam Heller of the Heller Organization. “Get a lot of information from doormen, feel them out.” The same works for finding an apartment in your dream building. Doormen likely know if someone is moving out. If you’re the first to call the landlord, he might not bother with the hassle of advertising the place and just give it directly to you.
A few final tips/
*Be prepared to pull the trigger!
One thing every real estate pro will tell you is that if you want to take a night to sleep on your dream apartment, it will most likely not be there in the morning. It might be a little scary to say “yes” on the first look, but if you say “maybe,” you have to accept the possibility of losing the place.
*Know the busy season.
It’s right now. According to Malin, the most difficult months to secure an apartment are May, June, July and August. If you wait until after Sept. 1 to start looking, you might have more options available.
*Go scouting.
Sure, you can find the perfect apartment in a classified ad, but you can also find it by taking an old-fashioned stroll through your dream neighborhood. Sometimes landlords will put “For Rent” signs in the windows; sometimes they’ll post ads on lampposts; and sometimes you can just see the building you want to be in and ask the super if there are any vacancies and hit the jackpot.
*So you’ve decided to take a roommate.
One word of warning: A couple of years ago, the Fire Department began cracking down on illegal walls as a fire hazard. A lot of buildings that would once put up pressurized walls will no longer do this. But there’s no reason you can’t put up shoji screens or bookcases to separate two bedrooms. Heller recommends Wall 2 Wall NY, a company that provides storage dividers that separates the room and provides extra storage space.
*Beware of scams!
“A lot of times, when it’s too good to be true, it’s not true,” says Heller. “I get calls from clients telling me of all the great things they see online — but 99 percent of the time, it’s not real.”
Some things to be wary of:
The broker who invites you to meet him at a too-good-to-be-true-listing and you find out when you get there it’s already rented . . . but, this broker just happens to have another apartment around the corner for an extra $1,000 per month.
Another typical scam is the broker who insists that you need to give a huge amount of cash up front or you’ll lose the apartment.
This is a somewhat trickier needle to thread because sometimes you will, indeed, need to act fast to keep a great place. Heller’s advice: “Try to meet in their office, so you can see they have an established business — not on a street corner.”