Need a place to live? Stalk buildings...

The real estate market in NYC is cutthroat. Most places that are for rent require you to have a broker who takes a 1-2 month "commission" for finding you a place to live. We used a couple of brokers while we were here but it became pretty apparent that these brokers do not have access to all the available apartments. In order to put in an application form you have to pay a fee. Essentially you are down at least 10 grand just to rent an apartment.

We were getting a little frustrated from the lack of understanding of what we wanted from our brokers. Walking through the village one morning, we stumbled across a street fair. Thinking it was a very cool area, the girl decided to take matters into her own hands and cold call on an apartment block. Inside she approached the doorman. Surprisingly to me the guy was rather helpful and told us his place was full of condos (no rentals) but directed us to a couple of others that rented along the street.

Trudging into the second one we were told there was one available and the doorman happily gave us the key to head up and inspect it. We walked in and found a great view. The flat itself is a little cosy but perfect for the 2 of us. We got the details of the real estate and put in an offer the following week. Having found it ourselves we happily saved paying the brokers fee.

This proved how sometimes it pays to be a crazy stalker chick to save a couple of bucks...