The Hunt, Part II (Ultra Spacious)...

To pick up from yesterday... The hunt began on Monday. I took bundles of cash out of the bank (because if you don't have a job like myself, you will need to pay at least six months rent up front) and carefully hid it in my bag (more on that later) knowing that if I hit upon the right place, I would need to have immediate money to ensure that it was mine.

I headed to Midtown to one of the more notorious brokerages (they have the most listings) fully expecting to feel slimy and dirty afterward. I didn't have an appointment, so on my way up to the office, I had my first encounter with a broker asking me questions. "Maria" (not her real name) said follow me, we will go look at properties today. We went back to her desk in an open office sea of other desks with dozens of other brokers in various states of activity and started the search. After several questions, discussion of my budget ($1,600) and the intervention of her "partner" (I will call her Camille), she had written down three places. She "checked out" the keys from the key keepers (with a 20' wall of keys behind them) and we were off.

We rode the subway up to 72nd and Broadway, and wandered up to 75th Street near Columbus (great area!) to look at a ground floor front unit ($1,650) in what was a brownstone. The building looked nice, but unfortunately I never got to see the unit. The tenant had apparently changed the lock, and we couldn't get in. Too bad... While I hate the idea of being on a ground floor (mostly for security reasons), this place was on a beautiful quiet block.

Next we took the subway down to 50th and walked over to a doorman building on about 48th between 8th and 9th. This is the one I wrote about yesterday (back of the building, second floor, 175 sq ft, $1,625) This place was such a sorry excuse for an apartment (it was worth perhaps $1,200 just because of the neighborhood), the realities began to settle in. This was going to be a hellish process.

The next place we went to was on 48th between 10th and 11th (outside of where I wanted, and a real schlep to the subway). It was actually within my budget ($1,550), and at an "Ultra Spacious" 275 sq ft, not completely out of the question (the location still sucked). We get there, take the modern elevator to the top (5th) floor and behold... a bright sunny apartment (see above photo). Now if you look at this picture closely you will see that the room is long enough, but if you look closer you will also see that it is quite narrow. Turns out the room is about 8 feet wide and 20 feet long. But the real deal breaker is that for some reason the building owner decided that a utility closet housing a hot water tank should be placed along the outside wall narrowing the room down to about six feet, rendering the space useless. Now I suppose if you were say 20 years old, slept in a twin bed, and had no real furniture, it could work. The only advantage this place had was that it had a rather nice view of the city from the large windows. Otherwise it was a joke.

I was now feeling even less enthusiastic at this point. Maria said she would call me the next day (Tuesday) at noon with an address to meet her at 12:30, we then parted ways.

The next day, I was running a bit late, and didn't get up to the street from the subway until about 12:15. There was no voice mail when I came up so I called and left her a message. She called me back in about five minutes, and said she was sorry but she couldn't go out until 4:30 ("Will that be OK?"). So instead of heading back to Brooklyn, I decided to hang out in the city and wander around. I ended up spending the last hour waiting in Central Park as it was a short walk to the brokers office, and when 4:30 came around, no call. I decided I would be a trouper and wait it out until 5:00, then head back to Brooklyn. At 4:50 Camille called and said she was sorry but Maria was tied up and couldn't get out. But, she had a property for me to go look at on my own but I needed to get there quickly.

This place (at $1,600) was on W 64th Street between Amsterdam and West End Ave. It was also located adjacent to the projects. Now NYC's public housing is nowhere near as horrendous as Chicago's public housing is, none the less, I wasn't sure I wanted to live directly next to it, nor did I want to walk alongside it every day. Call me a snob, but this was not the New York experience I wanted. Well it turned out that I got there at 5:08 and the super had already locked up and left for the day. I called Camille, who in turn called the building because the super had told her he would wait (which he didn't). He was gone, and the front desk person (not a doorman) wouldn't do anything about it. So, that was a wasted trip. Camille called me back and apologized (which I actually appreciated very much) for wasting my whole afternoon waiting around. She asked me to come in at noon the next day (Wed) and she promised she would have several more places for me to look at.

Stay tuned as this saga is to be continued...