A Guide To Renting In NYC

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I just recently moved to New York City, and I have to admit the hardest part was trying to find an apartment to rent. In a city as big as this, with as many apartments as there are, you would just not think that finding a place to live would take so much of your time and energy; however, in New York City that is just not the case usually. When I got my new job, and knew I would have to be in the city within the next couple of weeks, I immediately started searching, and it felt like a full time job hunting for a place to live!

So I wanted to share some of my tips and tricks in this guide to renting in New York CIty. This is based on my experiences, and the options that I looked into, so obviously everyone’s experience is going to be different, and honestly your experience will probably be easier if you aren’t on as tight of a budget as me. But if I can find a great place to live within my strict budget then anyone else can definitely do it too!

Where To Look

So first things first, finding apartments that are for rent in the city is actually not that difficult. What is difficult is getting in touch with the realtors and scheduling tours, and doing all of this before the apartment gets rented by someone else. This obviously seems like a lot, but like I said there are always tons and tons of apartments for rent in the city, so it’s all about finding one that's available when you need it and in your budget. There were tons of different websites and apps I used to search for apartments that I would highly recommend.

Apartments.com was my favorite when apartment searching, because this is the website I eventually found my apartment through. Apartments.com has lots of filters so you can find an apartment in your budget with all of the amenities that you need, and one that’s in the right location for you as well. They make it very easy to set up an account so you can reach out to realtors when you find an apartment you like. Most of the realtors got back to me with information and could set up tours for me too. In addition to Apartments.com I also used Zillow.com, Hotpads.com, and Rent.com. These were all great sites for finding apartments within the city.

I also used websites like Roommates.com and even Facebook groups (like NYC - Housing, Apartments, Rooms, Sublets, Roommates). These were both great to find rooms that were available in apartments being rented out already, or finding people who were also moving and in need of new roommates. These sites are great if you are on a tight budget because you can usually get a better rent rate if you are splitting the costs with someone else!

apartments.com

What You’ll Need

And of course once you find an apartment you like and you reach out to realtors and or roommates to inquire about any question you might have, there’s some documents you will want to have handy so you can get the rental process going! Most places will ask for the following things so just be ready to send them to the appropriate people.

• Credit Score
• References
• Guarantor (if you don't make 40x your rent you may need a guarantor who makes 100x your rent)
• Proof of Employment
• Bank Statements
• Tax Returns
• Photocopy of Your ID

And of course there could be other things that the apartment will need in order to rent to you, so be ready for that. But for the most part these are the documents that I needed when renting my current apartment in NYC! I hope this was helpful and definitely let me know in the comments if you have any other tips or helpful advice for renting in NYC!

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