Flathunting in NY and ending up a Roosevelt Islander

A long overdue post on my experiences flathunting. Sitting on my bed in my new place, I finally get to write about what's been keeping me buys and slightly stressed out for the past few weeks. Flathunting in NY is not like in any other city... It's really stressful and I'm not just saying that - it's crazy how you can not even see a place without a broker and even if you are explicitly looking for no-fee apartment, you will end up with some self-proclaimed broker who wants a little piece of the pie.

The main problem seems to be that there is too much money in this city. We were talking to one of the decent brokers (and from my experience these are actually hard to come by) and she was telling us how she was showing a couple places whose budget for a 3-room apartment was 12,000 USD and that even in that range, it was difficult to find something. You would have thought that you can almost buy the whole place with that kind of a budget but no, apparently it's tough, whichever budget you have.
And you can really tell that people can rent out even a shoebox for good money in this city- and people will gladly pay for it. I was seriously considering becoming a real estate broker for a few days as those fees really seem to accumulate - there is not just a broker fee, no there is a move-in fee, a handling fee, a holding fee, a security deposit etc. etc. But ultimately I learned that potentially the individual broker might not even see a large share of this but parts of it always go to the building and broker firm...

In any case, I had found my dream apartment, directly facing Central Park, with a great view and in a fancy, old fashioned New York apartment building, but unfortunately not in an area where my potential flatmate wanted to move (was too high up, on 101st street), so the dream of the Upper Westside will be postponed. I don't even know how I got so hooked on the Upper Westside - I guess I was up there (it stretches from Lincoln Center, on the west side of the park up to 110th street) a couple of times and just enjoyed the vibe. It's more residential and quiet than midtown but actually has a lot of nice small cafes and restaurants, especially around Amsterdam and I guess what attracted me more than anything else was the proximity to Central Park. Central Park is such a nice place that I haven't been exploring half way enough. However, of course I am not the only person in the world that would like to live close to the park, so what happens is, the real estate prices really go up, the closer you get to the park. And more of the buildings are typical, older NY brownstone houses. Can be beautiful, but can also mean, rodents and bug problems if the buildings have not been renovated. But again, renovated usually means more expensive... So it's a difficult one and you just need to know that you will need to compromise on some things. Oh well, maybe I'll be living up by Central Park in my next life.

My current place on Roosevelt Island worked out really nicely through a friend, so I'm not complaining. There is no direct access from Manhattan to the Island- there's a bridge but it does not have an exit to the island, so you basically have to drive, ride or walk via Queens OR take the cable car or the subway. But that kind of secludesness makes it one of New York's best kept secrets as many claim. People who live in Roosevelt Island often work for the UN which is very close or want to be a little bit outside of Manhattan's craziness and not quite in Queens yet. So far, I have seen a nice mixture - people seem a little more relaxed here than in the city and there is actually more going on here than I would have expected. Let's see how the experience unfolds but I am starting to really look forward to living here for the next 12 months... Most people I tell about this, won't even know where it is, let alone that you can live here. But Mayor Bloomberg announced last fall that Cornell university is planning on building a campus over here, so it sounds like the island will become more developed (not sure if all inhabitants are so keen on that though). So who knows - they might be building another bridge at some point. Wikipedia just told me that I am in good company in any case - apparently former residents of Roosevelt Island include Sarah Jessica Parker and Kofi Annan...