Apartment! Apartment! Apartment!
Yesterday afternoon, Katie and I spent five hours walking all around the east side of Manhattan looking at open apartments. Simmons, a friend Katie met this week, came with us for a while, but she decided that she wasn't ready to commit and so we spent most of our time checking out two bedrooms. We looked in Spanish Harlem, the very tip of the Upper East Side, and finally settled on a great place at 86th and York. Like all places in the city, there are positives and negatives about this place.
Positive:
1) great neighborhood - it's near the East River on the Upper East Side and filled with young families and young professionals, there's a nice cleaner and laundry on the corner and tons of great restaurants in the area (I saw an Ethiopian one right across the street), it's very SAFE and the people living in our apartment now are also young women who absolutely love it
2) great view - there are big windows on each side of the apartment that let a lot of light in
3) great kitchen - by New York standards, the kitchen is huge
On to the negatives:
1) relatively far from the subway - it's a ten minute walk to the closest stop, BUT the 86th street stop is an Express which means that both Katie and I probably won't have to switch trains to get to our schools pretty quickly
2) railroad style - it's a railroad style apartment which means that you have to walk through rooms to get to others, it's long a skinny and (imagine this) on one side the door opens into the living room -- you then walk to the right through one small bedroom - you continue through a small hallway area with a huge closet and then on to the other bedroom - next you enter the kitchen next to which the bathroom is connected -- the good thing is that there are two outside entrance doors - one into the living room and one into the kitchen, so if someone comes in late they can just make sure they go through the door closer to their bedroom
there are two apartments on each floor and we're applying for the 3rd (although there are two others in the building up for August 1st leases)
3) Price - I must admit the price is at the top of my range, but I'll definitely manage. It's $1,900 a month total and I'll need to put $3,300 down within the next month to move in (security, first month's rent, broker fee, application fee). I'll be paying about half of my paycheck on rent, but knowing my frugal spending habits I'm convinced that it'll work. The cost is really due to neighborhood more than anything else and I think everyone would agree that this is a GREAT location.
In other news, I currently have HUGE blisters on the balls of both of my feet from walking miles and miles in my flip flops yesterday. I have chosen to wear tennis shoes to our last day of meetings (despite the required business casual attire) because I wouldn't be able to walk otherwise. Despite the shooting pain I am experiencing with every step, I still think New York is fabulous and I'm so glad to be here.
Positive:
1) great neighborhood - it's near the East River on the Upper East Side and filled with young families and young professionals, there's a nice cleaner and laundry on the corner and tons of great restaurants in the area (I saw an Ethiopian one right across the street), it's very SAFE and the people living in our apartment now are also young women who absolutely love it
2) great view - there are big windows on each side of the apartment that let a lot of light in
3) great kitchen - by New York standards, the kitchen is huge
On to the negatives:
1) relatively far from the subway - it's a ten minute walk to the closest stop, BUT the 86th street stop is an Express which means that both Katie and I probably won't have to switch trains to get to our schools pretty quickly
2) railroad style - it's a railroad style apartment which means that you have to walk through rooms to get to others, it's long a skinny and (imagine this) on one side the door opens into the living room -- you then walk to the right through one small bedroom - you continue through a small hallway area with a huge closet and then on to the other bedroom - next you enter the kitchen next to which the bathroom is connected -- the good thing is that there are two outside entrance doors - one into the living room and one into the kitchen, so if someone comes in late they can just make sure they go through the door closer to their bedroom
there are two apartments on each floor and we're applying for the 3rd (although there are two others in the building up for August 1st leases)
3) Price - I must admit the price is at the top of my range, but I'll definitely manage. It's $1,900 a month total and I'll need to put $3,300 down within the next month to move in (security, first month's rent, broker fee, application fee). I'll be paying about half of my paycheck on rent, but knowing my frugal spending habits I'm convinced that it'll work. The cost is really due to neighborhood more than anything else and I think everyone would agree that this is a GREAT location.
In other news, I currently have HUGE blisters on the balls of both of my feet from walking miles and miles in my flip flops yesterday. I have chosen to wear tennis shoes to our last day of meetings (despite the required business casual attire) because I wouldn't be able to walk otherwise. Despite the shooting pain I am experiencing with every step, I still think New York is fabulous and I'm so glad to be here.
posted by Sarah at
7:14 AM
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