MY NYC APARTMENT HUNT- How I found (and GOT) my pandemic priced studio!

hi guys welcome to my channel my name is kellyanne and if you're new here thank you so much for watching this video today is a gorgeous snow day in new york city so i figure since i won't be going outside anyway this might be a good time to sit down and record my apartment hunting video i've had a few requests and questions about how i found my apartment and i have definitely wanted to make this video too i've been in my new apartment for a little over a week now and with all of the stress and the hecticness of moving in i haven't had time to do this yet so i'm very excited to be finally making this video a little background information about me in 2020 i was living and working in tokyo and unfortunately due to the pandemic i lost my job in august so the company that i worked for flew me back home to la where i spent a couple of months living with my mom trying to honestly first and foremost grieve losing my job and second of all try to figure out what was next for me it was a total blank slate i could have gone in any direction but i really knew that i wanted to move back to new york city so i have lived here previously but i moved away to move to tokyo and then back to la so i did have to actually make the decision to move here again so of course right now in new york city broadway is shut down there's not a lot of jobs to be had but one of the main reasons that i really wanted to come to new york city right now is that you may or may not know this already but the real estate prices have been absolutely plummeting because of the pandemic and for the first time ever i felt like oh my gosh i think i could afford living on my own which is my dream so just to get an idea of what i have lived in in the past at what price point my most recent new york city apartment was in washington heights i had three other roommates i had my own room and i shared a bathroom and i paid 1100 so i figured if i just spend a couple hundred extra dollars i could have my own place i know some people genuinely love living with roommates and i have had some great roommates in the past but i'm also a classic definition introvert i love going out and having fun with people but when i come back home my home is really the place that i rest and recharge so it's always been my dream to have my own place in new york city and spoiler alert i now have that months ago back in la i started looking at street easy which is an apartment searching app and i found it so user-friendly and also addicting it became one of the things that i looked at every single day like instagram facebook street easy you can refine your search to the price that you're looking for and what kind of apartment you're looking for and by area as well so it's so easy to search around and i loved favoriting apartments that i liked and then going back to check what price it ended up going for doing this was not only fun but it gave me a really good idea of what was out there at what price and what i was looking for i will say that i also did look at craigslist i know some people have found amazing apartments on craigslist and i wasn't posed to it but i do kind of prefer going through something a little bit more professional and trustworthy like street easy oh another thing i did was i watched a bunch of videos from cash jordan on youtube if you don't know him you have to check him out he's a new york city real estate agent so he shows a bunch of apartment tours and he also talks about trends in real estate which is extremely interesting right now because everything is changing so by doing those three things street easy craigslist cash jordan i was able to really figure out like what were my non-negotiable things i was looking for first of all price point wise i was looking for something under fifteen hundred dollars a studio or a one bedroom believe it or not there are one bedrooms under 1500 right now and up until now if i said i was looking for a studio apartment for 1500 in manhattan everybody would think i was crazy because that has not been a thing until now obviously the pandemic has been horrible but personally this has been the one upside i was able to afford something that i would have never been able to afford my non-negotiable things that i was looking for was number one i wanted an apartment that was not on the first floor i know it's probably fine but just for my peace of mind i like to be at least one floor above street level just so i know that someone can't walk right up to my window where i sleep right next to the window number two i was looking for and this may sound crazy but a full-size fridge i saw so many listings for apartments that had either a mini fridge or no fridge and no kitchen whatsoever i just feel like it's not really that much to ask also i'm not a student anymore like i am a full adult and i need a full refrigerator and the last thing that i was really really looking for and was really important to me was the windows ideally i was looking for more than one window with a lot of natural light in the whole apartment and also a street view now i know that back facing apartments are generally quieter and that works better for some people but for me i'm more willing to have a noisy apartment with a street view i love to wake up in the mornings and open my curtains and see the world going by check the weather people watch that's just my thing it makes me feel like i'm in the city of course there were other things that were not quite non-negotiables but would really make me be like i love this place and those things would be exposed brick nice hardwood floors new and updated appliances but those things were totally not mandatory to me so if you're thinking about moving to new york city but it's months away these are things you can start doing right now and it's honestly really fun so the other thing that i prepared while still in la was the documents that i needed to apply to an apartment i read a ton of articles online about what sort of documents you need to rent an apartment in new york city and i prepared almost all of them and this was a lot of work considering that i also was going to use my mom as a guarantor so i needed all of those documents from her as well but i was really really happy when it came down to applying for the apartment because the faster you can get your application in the better you might not have all the documents you need and by the time you gather them the apartment is gone i will tell you once i get to the application process for the apartment i applied for what documents i actually needed because i really over prepared over-preparing is not a bad thing that's just like in my character i got so many documents so i moved to new york city on january 5th but it took some time to take care of quarantining covet testing so by the time i was actually ready to start going out and viewing apartments it was january 11th so i had in my mind that i would get an apartment for february first and turns out i am absolutely shocked at how fast real estate moves here it literally happened in the blink of an eye on monday i went on street easy and i messaged a bunch of people and i made appointments for the next day on tuesday i went to those open houses on wednesday i applied for the apartment i liked and got it and on thursday i signed the lease and got the keys so within four days this whole process was over so with all of that background information out of the way let's look at the apartment tours the first apartment that i looked at on my one day of apartment hunting was spoiler the apartment that i ended up getting i wish that i could be like save the best for last and the last one was the one that was perfect but that's just not how it happened so this apartment was in hell's kitchen the gross rent was 14.90 with a net effective rent of 13.84 because there was one month free on a 14 month lease so this is something that a lot of apartments are offering right now they're like oh well instead of lowering the price down we'll offer a free month or two or three which would offset the cost you still do have to pay the gross rent but at the end of your lease you'll get a free month or a couple i also know that some apartments will let you pay the net effective rent for all of the months of the lease if you just figure that out with them unfortunately my apartment said no when i asked to do that so i walked into this apartment and immediately my jaw dropped because the first thing you see when you walk in is this stunning wall of exposed brick an old fireplace the two windows with the fire escape the gorgeous hardwood floors i just knew that i was in love with this apartment i took a look at the kitchen and the bathroom i walked around the apartment a couple times i chatted with the real estate agent and as an added plus there was a dishwasher which was pretty exciting the big appeal of this apartment for me was the windows the amazing natural light the exposed brick wall i loved how big and open it felt and i really really loved the location so i left this viewing and i was honestly shaking and smiling ear to ear but i had other appointments that day so i obviously went to them so let's talk about those appointments the next apartment i saw was in kipps bay and it was actually listed as a one bedroom the gross rent was 14.95 and the net effective rent was 1370 with one month free on a 12 month lease i guess i couldn't really tell from their listing on street easy that this apartment was on the ground floor which was kind of one of my non-negotiable things so once i showed up i was already like oh this is not my apartment but to add on to that i didn't really like the area i had never been to kipp's bay before and it just didn't really speak to me or call to me and i did feel like the apartment was just one long hallway and that was a little bit odd i don't really love having to walk through the kitchen area to get to the bathroom plus there was no real living room area like what were you supposed to do with that kind of entryway with the shelf thing on the wall but it was pretty much a no for me once i saw it was on the ground floor i told the real estate agent i said you know i have to say honestly like this is just not my apartment and he was like all right no worries and i went along my merry way the next apartment i saw was in chelsea which sounds amazing but you guys this was the weirdest worst apartment i've ever seen in my life i don't even know why i wanted to see this in person but once i arrived i was like oh no what have i done i did not even take a video of this apartment so i screen recorded their listing on street easy so i could show it to you now listen they're listing on street easy said you have a private entrance well a private entrance means there's a door to your bedroom on the main street i just have to say that as a woman i don't feel comfortable with that if you do more power to you but personally that was just not something i was open to but as for the price it was 1500 gross rent 13.85 net effective with one month free on a 13 month lease i also kind of thought that the tiling throughout the whole apartment was weird and it was extremely dark there were windows that looked out onto an alleyway it just the vibes were just off and i told the real estate agent who was a woman i said you know what i don't think i would feel safe here and she said honestly i would not recommend that a woman live here so i totally understand the next apartment i saw was in the east village and this was a bit of a weird experience the real estate agent that i had been communicating with didn't make it clear to me that he wasn't gonna be there and when i called him he was mad at me and he actually kind of yelled at me which made me 100 not want to even view this apartment but basically he said he just left the door open and wanted me to just go in so i did i'm just such a people person that i feel like i have to like the real estate agent and the fact that this guy was mad at me was a huge turn off to me but also this place was just not really what i was looking for i didn't really like that the fridge was kind of in the main living area and i didn't like that the windows were back facing but that's the thing is you don't really know until you're in the space in person and you can see it's so much clearer and then you know oh this isn't even close to what i'm looking for the next apartment i saw was in manhattanville which i had never heard of but it's basically like between upper west side and hamilton heights i guess so their listing on street easy said that it was 1465 flat but once i arrived i found out that that was the net effective rent and that the gross rent was like 2 000 so that was pretty off-putting to me but i saw the apartments anyway this apartment was in a luxury building and again i didn't know that this was not what i was looking for until i saw it in person it was really nice there was a doorman there was a laundry room a package room it was very much a community vibe i passed a bunch of people in the hallways but it was a huge building and i would have been one of thousands of people okay that's probably overestimating hundreds 1 000 i'm not sure but i mean the apartment was absolutely stunning the view was incredible it was updated with like cool appliances and the sink and the kitchen and the bathroom but i also will say and i won't show it to you but i went into the bathroom and there was like really really bad poop stains on the toilet which was like why would you show me this dirty apartment it was very confusing to me but the good thing was that seeing this apartment made me know for sure that i wanted to live in a smaller building where i really felt like i was city living and that's what i got the very last apartment i saw this day was in the upper west side and this apartment was 1350 flat rent stabilized and all utilities included the only thing you would have to pay for would be wi-fi there was a doorman an elevator a laundry room a bike room this was a great option the only downside is that the room was extremely small and the real estate agent told me that a lot of columbia students live here so it's definitely a huge step up from a dorm situation and maybe a college student wouldn't mind so much that the space was so small i really seriously considered this apartment because the price was low and it wasn't bad there was a nice view from the window honestly it would really only fit a bed maybe a dresser maybe a desk but it was basically a tiny bedroom i kind of felt like oh maybe this is what i should get something that's really small and cheap but i talked to my mom about it and i just really needed someone to tell me that i deserved more space one of the main things i struggled with in my apartment search was feeling like i was worth spending this amount of money on myself so i'm really glad that i had my mom to go to to tell me that i really deserve enough space to live so after my long busy day of apartment searching i went back home and i just could not stop thinking about the first apartment that i saw and it just felt right i just felt like this is my apartment i need to just put an application out there and see what happens i really thought it was going to be hard to find an apartment that would be willing to take me on as a tenant because i'm currently unemployed so i don't have pay stubs proof of employment i've never put my name on a lease before so i don't have any previous landlords as a reference so i felt like i was a really risky tenant and that it would take me a lot of trial and error to find someone willing to take me on turns out thankfully i was wrong so that night i texted the real estate agent i said i want to put in an offer or an application he sent it over to me and i spent that night and the next morning working on it while i did previously prepare all of the paperwork that i would need there was still a lot that i needed to do i needed to go to a print shop to print out the application to fill it in by hand there were some forms that my mom is the guarantor needed to do as well let's talk about what i actually needed i needed to send the completed application i needed to run my credit score and then i needed a copy of my photo id a letter of employment which i didn't have pay stubs which i didn't have tax returns from 2019 and 2018 the first two pages and my most recent bank statements and i also needed all of those things from my guarantor as well so since i was missing some of those really important documents i decided to write a letter explaining my current situation and why they can trust me to pay the rent i know personally that i'm trustworthy but of course these people don't know anything about me i think this was probably my main selling point i explained to them that i had a really good credit score i had enough money in my bank account to cover a year's worth of rent and then some and of course i also had my mom as a guarantor and then i just sort of appealed to the emotion of it all i told them how much i loved the apartment how much i was so excited to live alone for the first time and that i would really treat the apartment with care and that i would be a quiet and respectful neighbor as well so after all of that on the day that i sent in the application i got the apartment it blew my mind so then i needed to get bank certified checks of the security deposit which was one month's rent first month's rent and then i also had a guarantor deposit which was another one month of rent so it was definitely a lot of money to put out there initially but besides obviously the first month of rent that other money is going to eventually come back to me when i move out of this place there was a guarantor form that i needed my mom to fill out and get notarized so that was a little bit stressful but the very next day i had the keys in my hand and i was able to go to the apartment i initially thought i wanted my lease start date to be february 1st but the real estate agent explained that if i was able to make it january 15th they would be more likely to pick me and it ended up working out so great because then i had about two weeks to make the move from my airbnb to my new place little by little just a little bit every single day as opposed to one ridiculously stressful moving day so i started looking for apartments on january 11th and my least start date was january 15th it shocked me real estate moves so fast here in the blink of an eye the first thing i did once i had the keys in my hand is i went to the store and i bought a tape measure so i could measure the entire apartment and i bought a mini bottle of mo a which was 20 bucks and that's definitely over expensive but this was a big big moment for me and i really wanted to celebrate so i got to my new place popped my mini bottle of champagne and celebrated all of my hard work and my leap of faith and my dream come true the timing was absolutely perfect this apartment had been vacant since october and through the street easy ad i was able to see that the most recent tenant paid two thousand one hundred and fifty dollars per month so i got an absolute steal that would have never been this cheap in this area for a place this nice it has been an absolute dream come true moving into my dream studio in hell's kitchen so if you want to see an empty apartment tour of my apartment i will link that up above and i will also link my moving day vlog i hope i covered everything i've been sitting here talking for so long if you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment down below and i will try to answer that i hope this is helpful for anybody that is starting their apartment hunt during the pandemic my advice to you is that now is the time you're going to get a great deal and a great apartment it'll definitely take some searching and some trial and error but now's the time i'm currently working on organizing and decorating my new apartment so if you're interested to see videos about that please subscribe down below and thank you so so much for watching and i will see you in my next video [Music] bye [Music] you

Channel: Kellianne Safarik

Views: 13,971

Keywords: kellianne, kellianne safarik, kellianne safarik vlogs, female vloggers, female vlog, nyc vlog, nyc vlog 2021, nyc vloggers, new york vlog, new york vlog 2021, new york vloggers, new york city vlog, new york city vlog 2021, new york city vloggers, nyc apartment hunting, nyc apartment tour, nyc apartment tour studio, how to find apartment in new york city

Id: j2M7UgfK8Nw

Length: 21min 52sec (1312 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 12 2021