Background:
Shenae Grimes (actress on the new Beverly Hills 90210) was searching online for a NYC apartment. Jimmy Kimmel helped out and found some intriguing ads on Craigslist.
Jimmy Kimmel Finds Some Interesting NYC Apartment Rentals
December 28th, 2010 : The Naked Apartments Team
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Good news
We overhauled the page that’s all about individual landlord and brokers with an improved design and new functionality:
New feature
Renters, want to see what two bedrooms your favorite broker has on the Upper West Side? Now you can. Our new profile page enables renters to search ALL listings from any broker or landlord and refine their search by neighborhood, amenities, max rent and more.
[Read more →]
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Renters often become frustrated/irritated/angry when a broker witholds the exact address of a building. To understand why, renters need to understand the broker’s perspective.
When a broker discloses the address of an apartment, there’s a chance the renter bypasses them in order to avoid paying a broker’s fee.
Sidestepping the broker in this way does happen and happen often, especially when fees are as expensive as they are in NYC. And it’s for this reason that most brokers will not share an address with you, especially before you’ve met face to face or signed an agreement and gone through a qualification process.
If you’re the type of renter that refuses to pay a fee, then you can easily limit your search to no-fee rentals in whatever NYC neighborhood you’re considering; however, know that you will limit your choice of apartments. To land some of the best apartments in NYC, you’ll have to pay a fee. To understand why this is the case, read our explanation on the economics of no-fee.
So while it’s certainly frustrating to meet a broker in person before you find out the exact location, unfortunately, there’s just no way around it, unless you limit the number of apartments to consider.
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Renter Tips
Bed Bugs in the Apartment Building: How to Know – Ask!
December 7th, 2010 : The Naked Apartments TeamTotally paranoid about bed bugs when hunting for NYC apartments for rent? You’re not alone. It’s a common concern for many of our renters. You and your fellow renters really want to know which buildings have had an infestation, especially before you sign a 12 month lease. So how do you know? Ask! New York City landlords are legally bound to disclose whether the unit or the building have had an infestation in the past year.
Supported by the renter community, a law binding landlords to ‘truth in bed bugs’ was passed in August 2010. As the law dictates, whether you ask or not, the landlord is required to disclose a bedbug infestation in the apartment or the apartment building. But to be safe, ask the landlord. Don’t trust that they’ll volunteer the information. If you need to, just mention the law and landlords should immediately understand their obligation.
Another resource for you to track down previous infestations is The Bedbug Registry. A free site where users self-report their infestations. Launched in 2006, the site has since logged a lot of reports and continues to grow in popularity, especially as the bedbug problem grows. But as is the case with all things, don’t believe everything you read on the registry. As the site itself says, “because our bedbug reports come directly from users, we can’t guarantee their accuracy.”
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Renter Tips
Before you start searching for your next apartment, you should know how much rent you can afford, or the income needed to get approved by a landlord.
Rent to Income
Landlords typically require that your annual income is at least 40 times the monthly rent. For example, if you and your roommate are looking at a $3,000 per month apartment, the landlord would require a combined income of $3,000 × 40, which equals $120,000. To determine how much rent you (and your potential roommates) can afford, simply divide your combined annual incomes by 40.
How Much Rent is Affordable?
You might have also heard that you should spend no more than 30% of your annual income on rent. Spending 30% of your yearly income on rent is widely believed to be an affordable amount, leaving enough money for all your other expenses.
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Naked Apartments applauds Mayor Bloomberg and the Department of Buildings for some great work investigating illegal NYC apartments that endanger renters, their neighbors, as well as firefighters and other first responders who handle dangerous situations that result from these apartments’ unsafe conditions.
Investigators “searched the online advertising site Craigslist… and posed as potential tenants… Investigators discovered illegal living conditions in 54 of the 62 rental apartments inspected.”
[Read more →]
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6 Tips for Naked Apartments Renters — From Quite The Experienced Renter
September 23rd, 2010 : The Naked Apartments TeamIn her new book, No Place Like Home, Brooke Berman describes her experience living in 39 NYC apartments. As she explains, “Moving is an incredible proposition to Americans. It is loaded with the very framework of our national mythology. We are a nation founded on ‘frontier’ mythology and on expansion as a tactic for reinvention and re-creation. Americans are taught that we can become new people by willing it to be so, divesting of old forms, old clothing and old dwellings and heading off for parts unknown. And New Yorkers are the worst, playing musical chairs with too-small apartments, always on the lookout for a better deal. NO PLACE LIKE HOME is a search for roots, rest and dwelling.“
We’re excited that Brooke took the time to share 6 great tips with you.
- Identify core values about where and how you live. Make a priority list. What’s important to you about “home”? For instance, my list generally reads: 1) Neighborhood, 2) Bathtub, 3) Natural light. I know that when looking for a place, these are the three things I won’t compromise on. Also, on the flip side, know what you’re willing to give up. I will give up space — and live some place small — in order to live in a specific neighborhood. [Read more →]
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Renter Tips
When you sign that fee check you may think to yourself, “wow, they’re getting a lot of money. I should become a broker!” But what most renters don’t understand is that a broker is usually not getting the full broker’s fee. And if you sign a no-fee apartment, the broker is not getting the full fee that your new landlord pays them. (Any apartment advertised as No-Fee just means the landlord pays the fee for you. Read more about this concept in our previous post, What Does No Fee Mean.)
Instead of going entirely to your broker, the money is typically split several ways. The brokerage firm that your broker works for will take the largest cut – usually 50% or more. And if someone else helped show the apartment, they also get a cut. [Read more →]
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Renter Tips
“No Fee!” That one little phrase makes every renter so excited, but why are only some apartments no fee? And why are the best apartments never advertised as no-fee? As a renter looking for your next apartment, you should understand the answers to these two questions. [Read more →]
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Renter Tips
Terminix, the pest control service company, recently released a list of the most bedbug-infested cities, and unfortunately, NYC topped the list:
1. New York City
2. Philadelphia
3. Detroit [Read more →]
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Renter Tips