There's No Place Like Home...If You Can Find An Apartment

I have got to get my own place.

Unfortunately, that is a lot easier said than done. In fact, apartment hunting in the five boroughs has been so discouraging that I've put it off hoping to put enough money together for a down payment on a condo and to get some furniture. Frankly, I'm not entirely sure that home ownership is the right move for me but in light of the alternatives I don't see what else to do. So, you ask, what are these alternatives you so loathe and why is buying your only viable choice?

Where do I begin? I live in Brooklyn. I'd like to keep living in Brooklyn but I insist on a few things.

I refuse to rent an apartment in a private house where the owner also lives in the house. Landlords are too damn nosy for my tastes. One would think that getting one's rent on time would be enough for them but a good number of them insist on getting into your business. You've heard my tales of woes with my current landlady. I'm not looking for a repeat of that so I shan't be going that route again.

I'm also not interested in basement living again. Basement living tends to necessitate living in private houses. Besides, basement apartments tend to be nothing more than large rooms divided into multiple rooms to make it appear to be a real apartment. They tend to get little if any natural light and the meters tend to be somewhere in your abode. It means that once a month (especially if you work during the day) that the landlord or someone affiliated with him or her will be going through your apartment in order to get to said meter. They will probably be checking out your stuff while they're at it. Some landlords have dishonest relatives who may see your stuff as their new stuff if you get my drift. (I lived in an apartment on the third floor of a house where someone came in and skipped the first and second floors in order to rob our apartment. I cannot believe that a crook suddenly got ambitious and decided to climb some stairs. I always suspected the landlady's son. She got really nervous when I, at the tender age of eleven, spurred on by too many episodes of "Scooby-Doo Where Are You?" wanted to dust the doorknob for fingerprints. What would you have concluded? Back to the rant…)
Once I have an apartment in an apartment building (preferably one with thick walls so I don't have to listen to my neighbors) I need a pet friendly atmosphere. I have a cat. I want to keep my cat. I refuse to move into a building that won't let me bring her with me.

There should be no bugs. At the very, very least there should be no bugs in the apartment while it's being shown. I can't imagine why anyone would want to rent an apartment after seeing a huge dead waterbug sitting in the middle of the floor. It's one thing to find out an apartment has bugs after you move in. It's quite another to see evidence of infestation beforehand. (Yes this has actually happened to me. I went to look at an apartment and there was a huge waterbug in the middle of what was supposed to be the bedroom floor. Needless to say I was not impressed.)

I need decent parking. Preferably a parking garage of some kind. I'll settle for reasonable alternate side of the street parking rules. I get home at midnight. I don't get to bed until 3 or 4 a.m. I refuse to get up at 8 for the sole purpose of moving the car only to have to get up 90 minutes later to move it again.

Maintenance should not be a hassle. Things like paint jobs should be done properly. There's nothing worse than a half-assed paint job. (In that same apartment in which I saw the dead waterbug sitting in the middle of the bedroom about half of the outlets were painted shut. With the large number of electronic equipment I own this would have been a huge problem. In addition, there was a cute little bar which would have been so cool, but alas, it was painted shut as well. I had no faith that a simple broken pipe or malfunctioning boiler would have been fixed competently.)

You would not believe how hard it is to find an apartment that meets this criterion. I'll start with the price. It is incredulous, how expensive apartment rents are these days. In my neighborhood a three-bedroom apartment can go for as high as $1300. Thirteen hundred dollars! I can buy a new computer for that. (Actually I can build a really good computer, better than what that same amount of money could buy you at the computer show but that's not the point.) And this is what they want for rent every month? Forget that! If I'm going to pay that much a month to live somewhere I may as well own the damn place! At least I'd have a deed to show for all the money I'd plunked down month after month. The scary thing is that these are the prices they want in Brooklyn. This type of rent is the type that one used to associate with the outrageous costs of housing in Manhattan. My neighborhood while served by 4 to 5 bus lines is only served by one subway line and you have to take a bus to get to it. Now I'll admit that I don't need a three-bedroom apartment. I would love two. I only need one but I'm not going to pay a fortune for it either. It would be nice if others took this tact, especially the suckers from out of town.

Pardon the obvious display of New York attitude but what the hell is wrong with you people? I'm referring the suckers, who come into New York from other states and drive up the cost of housing by grossly over-paying for an apartment. I don't care where the apartment is located $2000 a month for a one room hovel with a hotplate and a shower is not a bargain. Let me repeat this: I don't care where the apartment is $2000 a month for a one-room hovel with a hotplate and a shower is not a bargain. You wouldn't pay that much for an apartment in your hometown why the hell are you paying that here? This is my hometown I damn sure don't want to pay that much for an apartment either and your stupidity is allowing the landlords and the huge real estate conglomerates to think that they can jack up the prices to such ridiculous heights. And now that the yuppies can no longer afford to live in Manhattan the imbeciles are moving to Brooklyn and Queens causing the rents to jump up because they still willingly over-pay for an apartment. One would think that these folks would have learned their lesson already. But unfortunately, they have not. Now some of the worst neighborhoods in the city are trying to sucker people into moving into them by giving the apartment complexes grandiose names. I went to look at an apartment at a place called the Vandeveer estates. There was nothing estate like about the Vandeveer.

Now I know that some of you are inclined to talk rent stabilization. Here's a news flash; unfortunately, most tenants in New York City aren't covered by the rent stabilization code. And every year the law come up for renewal in Albany the idiots in charge manage to hack it up even more. We've been losing rent-stabilized apartments around here and "market" rents are driving all but the very rich out of the city. (I suspect that that is exactly what Guiliani wants.)

Of course even if you can afford an apartment there are more hoops to jump through than there are at a dog and pony show. I went to apply for an apartment at this one complex and they actually wanted a home visit. That's what I said a home visit. Besides the credit check they wanted to know what stocks I may own, any mutual funds, and 3 pay stubs. Later on in the application process they required a home visit. What am I applying for an apartment or welfare? Sheesh! The Vandeveer folks wanted eight pay stubs. Now I know they want to verify that you have a job but do they really need eight pay stubs? Isn't that a bit much?

I've also tried using a real estate agent. I don't really like real estate agents. Instead of paying out two months rent you end up handing over three. The real estate agent's fee is a months rent. Personally, I feel they're pimps raking in money for very little work. (They rate right up there with check cashing establishments on my shit list.) They get the landlords to list with them instead of just putting an ad in the newspaper then you have to deal with the agent. Thanks to them most of the ads in the paper are for apartments listed with agents instead of ones you can attempt to apply for yourself. Grrr! I went to real estate agency in a vain attempt to get another apartment. I told them I wanted a one bedroom. The woman at the front desk informed me that it would be difficult because one-bedroom apartments are hard to come by. I didn't care. She told me she'd call. She did. She told me she had a studio apartment for me. I told her I wasn't interested. (Exactly what part of one-bedroom did she not understand anyway?) I've never heard from her again. <Sigh> It's just as well. I've decided that it's in my best interest to buy a co-op or a condo. And the point of this this rant? To chronicle the journey that led me to such a potentially life-changing decision.

Oh and one more thing. For all you out-of-towners who keep getting suckered with outrageous rents in NYC? Here's a clue that your rent is too friggin' high: If you need five roommates in order to afford a one-bedroom apartment you're paying too damn much for rent!