stranded on an island....new here

Hi there....

my husband is finishing his 4th term of med school here in Grenada. He does 5th and 6th terms at St. Vincent's (another island) then we go to NYC. I'm trying to plan ahead for the move as I will go there by myself in Feb to move in and start school as well. I'm having a horrible time. The School is no help whatsoever, the websites for apartments all want money, and on top of that, everyone in NYC wants you to make a certain amount of money before they'll rent to you. How am i supposed to do that with both of us being students?


anyone know of student friendly renters or sites? thanks!

Welcome to the Boards! I'm Jill, wife of an ID fellow. NYC is very expensive! Almost every apartment has a several thousand dollar fee associated with it. Is your husband doing a program in NY? Maybe they can provide housing if your school can't? Do either of your programs havve housing Web sites? If not, I'd recommend a studio on the Upper East Side, but I'd wait til you got to the city to really start looking. Check out Craig's List (do a Google search for the NYC version) for some interesting listings. One of our members -- Julie -- lives in NYC now so she might have some insight.

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

[Auspicious]

Hi, and welcome!

Mostly what I have to offer you is empathy, because I too fear and loathe moving in NYC. We are planning to move from our current apartment in Queens to somewhere in Brooklyn in March or April. We're not looking forward to it, but, like you, we'll probably survive it. On the positive side, it's actually a really good time to come--with the economy in its current state, rents are down, the occupancy rate is down (i.e., more apartments available), lots more no-fee apartments are available etc.

Paying a broker around 15% of one year's rent to find you an apartment is actually the standard procedure in New York, despite the fact that any reasonable person considers this insane. Most people I know just bite the bullet--or bend over, as it were --and accept it. Increasingly, though, you can find "no-fee" apartments where they're being listed by the owner directly instead of through a broker and you're only going to be charged the normal deposit of first/last/security. Last year my boyfriend and I went on a brief apartment hunt and were able to see 3 no-fee apartments within a week and they were all liveable (though we ultimately decided to stay in our current apartment). At the height of the dot-com boom you would literally find a line around the block to see a no-fee apartment. But I digress.

Ok, so I always look in the Village Voice online (I think all three of the ones we saw last year were listed there, as was our current apartment) and the New York Times online. I've heard good things about craigslist, but haven't had the chance to use it myself, since it's relatively new.

Do you know what borough you want to live in, or what neighborhood even? Are you staying with someone while you search, or will it be more of a blitzkreig apartment search situation?

I bet you could also get some good answers--mixed in with lots of smartass ones--to this question on the boards at studentdoctor.net (try the Lounge)

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/forumdi ... &forumid=3

and they could probably cover the "what if we're both students" angle better than I can, since I've never been a student in NYC.

Good luck, let us know if you have more questions, and keep us posted--since I'm pretty much going to be a month behind you in this apartment-hunting process, I'd definitely be interested in hearing how it goes and what you learn.

thanks for your replies and advice!

I'm checking out craigslistas soon as I'm finished replying. I've checked out the Times, and that's been fairly helpful, and I check out a realtor site as well but they want 15% like you said...bend over. And since i"m from the midwest, I'll feel like I'm bending over twice. It's insane. We lived in DC before we came here and found our place through the newspaper after hitting pavement for over a week looking through free apartment guides and calling, etc....but I guess life just isn't about to get easier for me. Figures!
So, I'mnot sure which clinic or hospital he wil be at for his rotations, but since I'm going there ahead of time and will be living and studying there for 4 months before he gets there, he will put that down on his request form for the school in hopes to sway them to let him be in a clinic/hospital near our apartment.
The whole school thing for me is getting crazy. I'm going to Culinary school in Manhattan (Institute of Culinary Education) which lasts 7 months. My classes are frmo 8-noon 5 days a week which leaves me time to work. But finding a job AND an apartment in the month I have between leaving the caribbean and going to NYC is going to be near impossible. I don't care where I work. I have a degree in biology but I don't want to work in a lab, and anyway, I wash my hands of science. I'm just going to look for any food service related job..coffeeshop, waitress, don't care at this point.
It's just a catch 22 with both of us starting as students but needing to make a certain amount of money. The people running the show never seem to care that family helps out alot (my mother in law contributes substantially financially, not to mention we'll have the loans and my laon allows me $6000 living expenses off the bat)

it's a frustrating experience to say the least. and the people in charge always seem to forget that at one point in their lives, they were probably broke, living off loans, in debt, unemployeed or between jobs, too.

thanks for your help and whatever I receover from my NYC search, I'll share!