#Moving to New York City

There's no silver bullet when it comes to moving to NYC. Every person
you ask will have a different experience, and those experiences vary
from trivially easy to horrifically bad. No one story can encompass
the totality of the moving experience, but hopefully the tips and
guidance can help you avoid the worst possible experience.

##What You'll Need

* Income - most rentals require 40 X Monthly Rent in gross yearly income.

  So, if you are eyeballing a $1,500 studio, most landlords will expect
  you to be making **at least** $60,000 a year. If you are short of
  the yearly, some landlords will ask for additional months of rent
  up front to make up the balance. They might also ask for additional
  months of rent if you have poor credit, no/poor rental history, or
  because they can.

  If you're thinking 'wait, what if my parents/guardian/grandparents/contracted elder god cosign for me?'
  Assuming your landlord allows it, they will likely want to see at
  least 80 X Monthly rent in gross yearly income between all parties
  (or possibly for the guarantor). Meaning your $1,500 studio requires
  **at least** $120,000 a year in income from your guarantors or
  guarantors + you.

  You can also try to find a roommate to combine income and tackle
  some of these issues. Finding good roommates is in and of itself
  an adventure that this guide wont help you with. You might be able
  to skate the income requirements and other hassles of renting by
  working with a roommate who already has a lease. You should still
  try to get agreements in writing (e.g. how much you owe, when you
  owe it, and to whom you owe it) so that if someone tries to screw you
  over, you'll stand half a chance in court.

* Cash up front

  By this I mean cash in the bank. If you're paying actual cash for
  an apartment you're probably being scammed. Stop that. You want a paper
  trail and bank checks are a big part of that.

  You can typically expect to pay *at minimum* a security deposit
  (usually somewhere around 1 months rent + any pet deposits) plus
  the first months rent. So sticking with our $1,500 studio example,
  you need $3,000 in cold hard cash before you get your keys.
  By cash here, I mean cashier checks or money orders. Bank checks
  are usually the way to go. Some landlords will not take a personal
  check for your security and first months, so be aware of that.
  There might also be an application fee per person signing the lease
  and a credit check. This could add another hundred or more to your
  costs before you even get to lease signing.

  Depending on your financial strength (credit score, savings, rental history, etc.),
  you might also be asked to provide an additional months rent (or more).

  If you are using a broker (more on that later), you can expect to pay
  an additional 8 to 15% of the **yearly gross rent**. So $1,500
  a month is $18,000 a year, so anywhere between $1,440 and
  $2,700 a year. 10-12% is about average, which ends up being about
  1 months rent.

  So your $1,500 studio apartment might require anywhere from
  $3,000 to $6,000 up front.

* Paperwork

  Having some or all of the following can only help you:

  - Three months of paystubs
  - Two years of tax returns
  - Three months of bank statements
  - Utility bill
  - Landlord Letter of Recommendation (or something else that says you aren't a shit tenant)
  - Letter of Employment on company letterhead (not always required)

##Moving UnChecklist

Before digging into all the guts of moving, check whether you meet
any of the following items:

* I don't yet have a job in NYC but I want to move to the city!
* My friend promised I could couch crash until I find a place in the city!
* I expect to have the same Quality of Life in NYC as I do right now!
* I am using <insert TV show here> as my standard of housing selection!
* <insert trendy neighborhood here> or bust!
* I have a car and want to bring it with me to the city!
* I have <some basic savings> so I can use those until I find work!
* My NYC apartment needs to have space for all my stuff!
* NYC is super dangerous so I'll only live in <insert 'safe' neighborhood here>

If you meet one or (Gods help you) all of the aforementioned notes,
you are very well positioned to have a *terrible NYC experience*.

Moving to NYC without a job is a *very* dangerous prospect. Housing
is not cheap. Food is not cheap. Transit is not cheap. Nothing is cheap.
You can easily blow $20 or more on a meal that costs half that anywhere
else. There's only so long you can survive on hot dog carts before
your digestive tract disintegrates.

Some employers will not consider your applications unless you have
an address first. This requires you to get housing, which requires you
to apply for housing, which requires you to meet those income
requirements, which you don't. That can severely limit your housing
options. Have significant savings - e.g. if you can
find a roommate situation for $800 a month, have 12x that in savings plus
more for food and other basic amenities. Note we're talking thousands
if not tens of thousands in savings. If you're planning on coming to
the city and job hunting with just savings in hand, at least try to do it
in the spring/summer/fall. If it all goes to shit you can survive on
the street for a while since the weather wont kill you. Coming to NYC in
the winter with minimal cash on hand is a really good way to end up
homeless in the cold. Life is not a TV show. Think very carefully about
the worst case scenario if you run out your savings and still don't have
steady work and a safe place to stay.

Unless you are coming from another big city (San Francisco for example),
chances are your current living situation allows for you to have a
lot of stuff at a relatively affordable rent/mortgage. These things
are not true in NYC. You can expect to pay thousands of dollars a month
for a few hundred square feet in a 'trendy' neighborhood. Especially
if you're fixated on a super trendy neighborhood (soho, east village,
chelsea, etc.).

Don't get locked into Manhattan. NYC public transic can be a dumpster
fire on a bad day, but thousands upon thousands of straphangers use it
every day to get from A to B. Be open to a 30-45 minute commute if
it lands you an apartment that's the right combination of cost and
size relative to your income.

As far as the crime thing - NYC is the safest it has been, and gets
safer each year. There are always areas that are worse than others.
And lets be a little honest here - the color of your skin, your race,
your religion, and your sex can definitely have an impact on how
uneventful your experience of a neighborhood can be. There are a lot
of resources out there, including the NYPDs own crime database, that you
can use to decide if a neighborhood works for you. Remember - you can
still get mugged in SoHo. You can still get assaulted in Chelsea. And
you can go an entire lifetime in the Bronx without ever having a single
bad incident. Don't let stereotypes distract you. Do some research.

Don't bring your fucking car. Use public transit and leave your fucking
car at home. There's no space for it. Take the bus or the subway and
suffer like the rest of us. Parking will cost you a fortune, either
in cash for parking garages or in time spent circling the block looking
for a spot you wont get blocked into or ticketed into the 9th circle of hell.
You've been warned.

Finally, couchsurfing - look, you might be friends now. But I can
guarantee you that after a week your friend is pretty much done having
you farting into their couch. Especially if you are combinations of things
on the checklist (no job, lots of stuff, looking for your picture perfect apartment),
you could be on that couch for months. It's your call, but don't expect
a christmas card afterwards.

##Finding a Place

There are a number of sites to use. nakedapartments, streeteasy, and
triplemint are probably the most commonly used options. You can also
use Zillow, but that tends to be for real estate. craigslist exists,
and you're welcome to slog through it and sift the bullshit from the
good shit. Maybe you're looking to buy, but at that point you've probably
got enough money to hire someone to figure this shit out for you and you
don't need this guide. Try walking around neighborhoods you are
interested in and look for buildings with management numbers on them.
Call and see what their inventory looks like, whether its fee/no-fee,
etc. Do some legwork.

Anyways - rental properties come in a few flavors:

- Fee / Broker apartments. You need a broker to net you these places.
  The landlord can't or won't deal with renters directly, so you have
  to go through a broker.

- No Fee apartments. Usually these are high-end / luxury apartments,
  but it could also be a place where the landlord will pay some/all of
  the broker fee. Some brokers will still try to get you to pay a fee
  for a no-fee apartment. They can pound sand. Expect lots of angry
  text messages and passive-aggressive e-mails from your broker if they
  show you a no fee and you handle it yourself.

- Co-ops. These might be fee, they might be no fee. They might also require
  approval by the co-op board. They might have enough rules to strangle
  a whale. They might be perfect. You'll need to look into these on a
  case-by-case basis and read the co-op bylaws / rules / regulations
  *very* carefully.

- Illegal. Yeah there's no lack of these. Think of the 'basement'
  apartment, or a 1 bedroom that looks suspiciously like a converted
  studio with no fire exits. Apartments are supposed to have a warrant
  of habitability, but that doesn't always happen. Be careful of these
  - because they're illegal, once you get settled, you may not have
  a lot of recourse for getting shit fixed. If you do complain, the
  city might shut down the housing (because it's illegal) and then
  you are SOL. Avoid if possible - do research, try to stick to
  legitimate searching sites, google building addresses to see if
  there's a history of violations, etc.

- Fake. No lack of these either. Apply the sniff test - if an apartment
  listing looks too good to be true, it probably is. One common
  scam is brokers put up a 'perfect' apartment, but it doesn't exist.
  But don't worry! once you show up, they've got a ton of inventory
  that's 'basically the same thing' and then they waste your whole
  day. Look at things like the average rent in an area, the average
  size, and how often the apartments are renovated. An apartment that
  has all the nice stuff at a price that doesn't match is probably
  bullshit.

There's no silver bullet here on how to proceed. Look at the inventory
available and hope for the best. Some brokers will tell you that
inventory moves fast and that apartment you like can be gone tomorrow.
That is generally true. Someone always needs to move to the city. Be
aware of that.

##Rent Controlled / Stabilized / Preferential

You might see these terms thrown around, so lets quickly dig into them.

Rent Controlled apartments are relatively rare. It only happens if
a tenant has been living continuously in an apartment since
July 1, 1971. There are not a fucking lot of these, and you probably
wont get into one. Think of Monica from friends using her relatives
apartment. If you aren't related to someone in a rent controlled
apartment, you aren't getting it.

Rent Stabilized is more common. Rent stabilised apartments can have
rent increased based on guidance from the Rent Guidelines Board.
This tends to work best if people aren't constantly moving out of
an apartment, because each time an apartment is vacant the
landlord can bump it up more than if someone renewed. Some sites will
list the rental history of a place, so you can see just how much
more expensive its gotten over the years. Rent Stabilised units can
become non-stabilised based on what the legal rent for the apartment is
($2,774.76 in 2019 at the time of this writing). Your lease should state
whether an apartment is rent stabilised. Confirm it before you sign.

Preferential Rent is a sort of modifier on Rent Stabilization.
With Rent Stabilization, you have a maximum legal rent for the apartment
based on its unique rental history and any upgrades / renovations done.
The landlord then gives you a lower rate than that maximum legal rate.
There's any number of reasons to do this, but the main danger is that
the landlord can on renewal charge you the full legal rent. Whether
they will or not is a crapshoot, just be aware that if your apartment
comes with a preferential rent rider, that means that you're being
charged less than you could be. And that can change every time you
renew.

NYC has really strong tenant protection laws. Do some research into
the tools available for protecting yourself.

##Signing your lease

Great, you found a place, you've got the cash, you've applied and
were approved and now you have your lease.

FUCKING READ IT. Every single page of it. Read everything. Make sure
anything promised to you (appliances, covered utilities, etc.) is
*in writing*. No your broker saying "sure utilities are covered"
does not count. No the landlord saying "yeah we'll take care of that"
doesn't count. Get it in writing. Make a copy before you sign it. Ask
for a copy after the landlord signs it. Compare the copies and make
sure nothing was changed without your knowledge.

Be especially aware of things like the following:

- Landlord may explicitly exempt certain appliances from any warranty.
  That means if they break down its on your ass to fix.

- Landlord may explicitly require you to have window AC units installed
  professionally. This can be expensive, and is more common with
  apartments that have a window facing a public street.

- Some leases have language about 80% carpeting, pets, etc. These are
  sometimes 'wiggle' sections where they remain unenforced until there
  is an issue. Only your landlord can tell you whether this is true,
  and its up to you to take a chance on it.

- The rent payment dates, methods, and penalties. Know when your rent
  is due and how much the penalties are.

- No language about pest control. The landlord has a responsibility
  to upkeep the building, so keep an eye out for any missing language
  on the landlords obligations towards pest control.

- Garbage collection rules - avoid getting fined for doing stupid
  shit like not putting your garbage in the right areas.

Don't trust your broker to validate a lease. They want their cut,
and your happiness in your new apartment doesn't help them with that.
If you are unsure about a lease, look into local tenant legal aid
resources and see whether someone can help you out for free or for a
low fee.

##Moving In

Just a simple checklist:

* Take pictures of everything. Disposable cameras are great for this
  because film is harder to manipulate than digital, so if you have
  to go to court you can tell your landlord to shove it up their ass
  because you've got the negatives.

* Test your appliances. Gas, hot water, toilet, shower, sink, etc. Look
  at pipes. Look for leaks or signs of leaks (damaged / stained wood, drywall)

* Look for cracks in the floor, wall, ceiling, etc. Those are areas that
  mice and other pests can enter.

* Get a good look at the locks. Usually the landlord will let you know
  which locks you can change. Local locksmiths might be able to swap
  out the tumbler. Getting a deadbolt in addition to the normal lock
  is always a worthwhile investment. You should always change at least
  the deadbolt lock or tumbler to keep previous tenants out.

* Check any windows to make sure they are secure and can't be opened
  easily.

* Check with your landlord for any moving regulations, e.g. not on
  weekends or not at night. Try not to piss of your neighbors within
  a second of you entering by moving a bunch of shit around at 1AM in
  the morning.