THE dream: finding a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment in an elevator building with a doorman in Greenwich Village for $2,000 a month.
NOW HEAR THIS Citi Habitats holds seminars each year at about 20 universities around the country for students planning to move to New York. Cullen Hilkene, a Citi Habitats broker, told a gathering at Princeton that they should expect to live with roommates.
The reality: nearly impossible.
Spring is the season when newly minted college graduates flock to New York City to start their careers. They begin the search for their dream apartment, brokers say, with the same single-minded determination that earned them their degrees and landed them their jobs in the first place.
But that determination only goes so far when it comes to Manhattan real estate.
“Almost every single person I’ve worked with thinks there’s a golden nugget of an apartment waiting right for them,” said Paul Hunt, an agent at Citi Habitats who specializes in rentals. “They all want to be in the Village, and they all want the ‘Sex and the City’ apartment.”
The first shock for a first-time renter will probably be the prices.
Consider that the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom in the Village is more than $3,100 and that the average for a studio is just over $2,200. Or that the average rent for a one-bedroom in a doorman building anywhere in Manhattan is close to $3,500.
Mr. Hunt said that when he shows prospective renters what their budget really can buy, they are sometimes so appalled that “they think I’m trying to fool them or something, and they run away and I don’t hear from them again.”
Alternatively, the renter checks his or her expectations and grudgingly decides to raise the price limit, look in other neighborhoods or get a roommate. “When expectations are very high, the process can be very frustrating,” Mr. Hunt said.
The thousands of new graduates who will be driving the engine of the city’s rental market from now until September will quickly learn that renting in New York is not like renting anywhere else.
The second shock is likely to be how small a Manhattan apartment can be. It is not uncommon in New York, for example, to shop for a junior one-bedroom or a convertible one-bedroom, neither of which is a true one-bedroom at all but really a studio that already has or can have a wall put up to create a bedroom.
Aside from the realities of price and space, the requirements set by New York landlords are also bound to help turn a bright-eyed first-time renter’s outlook grim. To start with, landlords want only tenants who earn at least 40 times the monthly rent, which means an $80,000 annual salary for a $2,000 apartment. According to census data, more than 25,000 graduates ages 22 to 28 moved to the city in 2006, and their median salary was about $35,600.
Those who don’t make 40 times their monthly rent need a guarantor, usually a parent, who in turn must make at least 80 times the monthly rent. In addition to a security deposit, some landlords also want the first and last month’s rent. Tack on a broker’s fee and a prospective renter for that $2,000 apartment is out of pocket nearly $10,000 just to get the keys to the place.
“There’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t happen in other markets,” said Gary Malin, the president of Citi Habitats. “On top of that, every owner also has their own requirements, so just because you qualified here doesn’t mean you’ll qualify there. And there’s no rhyme or reason to it.”
So the key to finding that first apartment is to learn as much as possible about the market before arriving in the city and also to know that keeping an open mind will make the search easier. “People who walk in with blinders on and can only say, ‘I want, I want, I want,’ when their budget doesn’t allow for it, they create this anxiety,” Mr. Malin said. “You have to be flexible and you have to come to the city armed with information and financial paperwork.”
Mr. Malin said that the volume of calls his agency has fielded in the last few weeks would suggest the city is headed for another strong rental season. The market was so tight last year that the vacancy rate hovered under 1 percent, but the rate has now inched a little over 1 percent, he said, so there will be slightly more inventory and prices may stay stable.
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