Apartment Search Tips
After over a month of a depressing apartment search I am reaching out to the brownstoner community. How does one go about finding an apartment without dealing with crooked brokers or places that masquerade as being in one location when they are clearly in another? I work at the UN (i.e.-have a steady long-term income),…
After over a month of a depressing apartment search I am reaching out to the brownstoner community. How does one go about finding an apartment without dealing with crooked brokers or places that masquerade as being in one location when they are clearly in another? I work at the UN (i.e.-have a steady long-term income), am in my mid-thirties and have excellent credit and references. I would love, love, love to have a space in a brownstone, but don’t know where these are advertised? Is there a special agency that specializes in small brownstone units, or is it as friends say and purely word-of-mouth? If it is the latter please spread the word. Hopefully at some point in the future I will be posting here about my own remodeling work, until then I will be an excellent tenant. Thanks folks! Cheers.
Thank you all for your useful comments. I am of course checking the listing here regularly. Your tips have been useful. I trust I will find something soon. Thanks again!
Mind you, Brownstoner also has rental listings right here.
Have you tried searching for apartments on http://homes.trovit.com yet?
It’s like a google search engine but only for home/apartment listings around the web…there are millions of listings. Hope it’s helpful!
In my experience, the legit FRBO postings are terribly obvious (and few). They are either super detailed, lovingly written, with many photos — or they are two sentences long and basically say “for rent, an apartment, must have good credit.”
If the person on the phone says they’re the “manager,” forget it. They’re an unlicensed broker, aka scam artist.
Going through a legitimate broker with a storefront in the neighborhood doesn’t hurt, either, as long as the cost of the apartment is $100 less to offset the broker fee.
But I’ve always ended up renting directly from owners. They had the best apartments.
I found my tenant through Jump Post. They have some great listing currently in Brooklyn and Manhattan. http://jumppo.st/9GzD34
Good Luck,
Allan S.
how creepy there are tons of snezanas in real estate. anyway you can email me at snezanc@gmail.com.
i don’t believe in advertising on brownstoner without paying but i am the only snezan in north america and i am confident the only real estate agent named snezan in the entire world, hahaha
Wow, thanks all! These comments/suggestions are really helpful. @Snezan – How can I contact you directly? I am currently at Gates and Franklin and would LOVE to be on Clinton or Washington. Thanks.
if something looks like it’s too good to be true, then it probably is.
Also it’s not like there are that many brownstones in Clinton Hill that aren’t probably too far east for you. Clinton Avenue and Washington are mostly all pre war elevator buildings. So if you want to live in a brownstone apartment you’re going to have to live on St. James, Irving, Downing etc… possibly on Madison and Classon. maybe Waverly.
Never call a listing on craigslist that doesn’t have cross streets on it. Setup an rss feed on craigslist that has specific streets you’re interested in. Don’t bother using general words like brownstone because every broker has four paragraphs about the neighborhood. Type in street names that you know and like.
Walk down those blocks on a Monday or Tuesday morning when supers are taking out the trash and be nice and ask them if they know of any apartments.
Make sure to use a small local broker in the areas you’re interested in. Larger brokerages can’t help you because no one is willing to share the less expensive listings and most of their landlords are newer owners that are looking to maximize rents.
Lastly… you can email me. The landlord I work with owns most of the buildings on Clinton between Gates and Lafayette. We have two mansions which are all studios at on Greene and Clinton. He just rented two studios for $1200 so I’m assuming we’ll get some more in September.