Photo: Alain Bachellier/Getty Images
A Friend and Her Husband Had Been Looking to Move Out of their Cramped, Tao-Dark Two-Bedroom in Prospects for Years, But the Rental Market SEEMED TO GET WORTSE AND WORKS. “I was checking the Most Days of the Week on Streeteasy and Craigslist for One or Two Bedrooms and It Was Really Fucking Slim Pickings,” Molly Tells. Everything was tiny or overprical or bot, offen with a huge broker’s fee. Thatn, her friend put her in touch with the super at a nearby building she had HAD Long Coven: Big, Open apartments, Most of say with balconies, near the park and the train. In the Darkness of Her Search, The Building Became Her Focus. “I was Kind of Psycho About it, Texting and Email All the Time,” She Says. This was on for over over Over a year. At one point, the super stopped Responding but, undeterred, Molly Enlisde Friends in the Building to Ask on Her Behalf. Last february, an enormous one-bedroom with a balcony opened up for $ 2,800, and they were first in line.
Conventional Real-Estate-Listting Sites Have Become a Darker Place in Recent Years. ITH’S NOT THINGS WERE EVER EVER ALL THAT GREAT ON STREEEASY OR CRAIGSLIST, but the market Continuing to hit record High after record High with median Rents in Manhattan and Brooklyn Reaching $ 4,599 in April, Acciting to the the latest ELIMAN REPORT. Then there are the bidding wars. The Broker-Fee Bidding Wars. The Brokers Who Ghost. The open-house mêlées. By the time anything good goes up on any of these sites, iTher been renead or you’re left Competing with dosens of hopiots in an arbitrary War for an alcove studio with Views of a brick wall. Streeteasy is Dead. To get a decent apartment in new York City right now, the off-grid listing is your best shot.
A brief survey of recently successible apartments hunters turns up a version of the same story, again and again: a sister’s OLD College Roommate who was motiv and needs to break his lease. This Informal, Social-Excavation Method is Nothing New, But it seames to have taken on new significance in the post-Pandemic market France. “I Never sucesssfullly found an apartment through streeteasy,” a renal in Ridgewood tells. “I’ve Never made Much Money and Don’t Have the Ability to Pay a Broker’s Fee.” AFTER BROWING THRAGH ENDSHEES Craigslist Ads and Local Broker Websites, she finds her current apartment through a polish community site. (She would be only talk to me if i did i didn’t reveal the name of the site: “I don’t want it to blow up.”) She had to use google translate to navigate it. IT WORKED: SHE ENDED UP FINDING A RENT-STABILIZED ONE-BEDROM FOR $ 1,500. There are no photos in the lissting but also no Broker’s Fee. A Friend Went to see it for her and it was perfect – a little crumbling but the tenant before Had fixed it up. Soon She’ll Be Leaving New York and Moving Out. Nor for the apartment? “I’m trying to give it to a friend.”
A Colleague Had Been Looking for Ages for a One- Two-Bedroom that wasn’t incredibly overprical. “I was just like, Everything SEEMS to be $ 5,000”She Says. She had tried the open houses. She has had tried lisings project, whic was populated with $ 5,000 prospects heights one-bedrooms and people charging rent in addition to making you watch. have required her to keep the owner’s supply, a friend of a friend Walked by. Did She Want Her apartment? A year late, this colleague is about to re-sign her lease. She Almost Didn’t Want to Talk to For Faar of Jinxing the Whole Thing: “Make Fun, but this apartment has made me happier than i’ve ben in my life.”
Then there are the People Who Founds by Turning every aspect of their lives an extension of streeteasy. A renovated two-bedroom Garden apartment in bed-stuy is going for $ 3,000 in the bococa pars Group. A desperate searcher who took to be begving on nextdoor got themed a “gem of a place that would’ve never hit market.” A parent grup chat about how to get a toddler to stop biting tourned into an off-hand remark about a two-bedroom opening up acroSs the hall in the fall. One renal Happy Living solo in a stand-alone house in park slope got the place after a hookup tourned friend tired of the long-term sublet. Would he want it?
Note Creative atempt work out. One Couple I Spoke to Told with They Printed Out Tags that Read, “Are You Looking for Some of the Cleanest, Neatest, Most Space-Raspecting, and Finania Stable Residents You’ll Meet?” and tied say with ribbons to brownstones in crown heights. “With Streeeteasy, we’d go to a showing and there was a line out the door,” one of the Told me. “I was like, I think I need to be creative here.” The tags didn’t work. (They Were taken down almost immediately.) And the Efffort was A Little Try-Hard. But they were desperate. “We were just Brainstorming what we were to increes ours of finding a place,” They Said. “The Housing Market is Crazy.”