My new apartment

After three days of hard searching, I finally have an apartment in New York City.  The stress from apartment hunting made me want to kill someone.

"I fucking hate this realtor for making me wait 30 minutes"

"Why the fuck does no realtor ever pick up their fucking phones?!"

"Oh Stuyvesant Town looks nice" ... hour later after consulting a competing realtor and my sister ... "Stuyvesant Town doesn't seem so nice"

"... You gotta be kidding me.  We just traveled to fucking Times Square to meet the realtor at his office ONLY to find out the apartment is already taken?!"

We saw basically two types of apartments: grungy walk-ups and "luxury" apartments.  My roommate and I first started off at looking at the grungy walk-ups.  Some where pretty dirty looking.  We saw a true two-bedroom, 5th floor walk-up in Murray Hill for $1,750.  $1,750 is a dirt cheap price point for the apartment, but the place looked worse than most apartments in Allston.  Others were practically smaller than my freshman dorm.  The "luxury" apartments were pretty lame also.  One "luxury" apartment building we saw had this gaudy lobby area full 19th century furniture, which instead of impressing me just made me feel like the management company was trying too hard.

Ultimately we decided on a very unassuming and modest high-rise apartment building located in the Upper East Side.  Originally, the building was government subsidized for low to middle income people and was full of aging seniors.  I'm not sure how many of those seniors are still there after the building raised rent to market levels, but I expect I'm going to be living with a good amount of old people.  It's cool though.  We got a great deal: one month free on a 14 month lease, no realtor's fee, and heat and electricity paid for.  While it isn't a glamorous apartment in Midtown West with a roof-deck for parties and a contemporary lobby sporting designer furniture, it is my soon to be new home!