ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE NY TIMES: 9/20/09
Published: September 18, 2009
THROUGHOUT law school, Atossa Movahedi was unhappy with her living quarters. First came a share near frenetic Times Square. Then came a share in dormlike Stuyvesant Town.
Ruby Washington/The New York Times
A charming one-bedroom in Chelsea has high ceilings and big windows.
But when she hunted downtown for a one-bedroom rental of her own, she had a tough time deciding. On the one hand, everything she saw was basically fine. On the other hand, everything had some kind of problem, even though she didn’t feel she was asking for much.
Her monthly budget was around $1,600. Given her preference for a one-bedroom, not a studio, “I knew I was going to have to give up something,” she said. She just didn’t know what.
Miss Movahedi, 27, comes from Newton, Mass., near Boston. She graduated from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and received a master’s degree in international politics from American University in Washington. When she enrolled in New York Law School four years ago, two friends living in the theater district needed a roommate. So she moved to the Ellington, a rental tower on West 52nd Street. Her share was $1,300 a month.
The musical “Hairspray” was playing on her block, so she constantly pushed through lines of theatergoers. Honks and sirens awakened her at night. “I had anxiety that I never had before,” she said.
After two years, she and one roommate moved to a Stuyvesant Town one-bedroom. She paid $1,560 for half of the living room, while her roommate paid $1,810 for the bedroom. The neighbors included plenty of noisy students.
But she loved the location near the East Village, where “there were so many great, cheap restaurants that on any given night I couldn’t decide where to go,” she said.
So that’s where Miss Movahedi — who is looking for work at a nonprofit organization, preferably in human rights or international law — decided to look for a place of her own.
At $1,600, a one-bedroom on East 12th Street was so cheap that she would have taken it. But it rented quickly to someone else. Still, the street seemed seedy. In the East Village, “one street differs from the next,” she said, with some blocks feeling perfectly safe but adjacent blocks seeming eerily deserted.
She soon realized she needed to increase her budget.
Most places were decent if unexciting. “It became difficult to decide one over the other, because I never really loved any of them,” she said. “They were all completely acceptable. It was always, should I take this? Should I wait for something amazing or does that place not exist?”
One early experience soured her on agents. After she told an agent she hoped to avoid paying a broker’s fee, he took her to a tiny, dark no-fee East Village studio.
But he had another place to show her — this one with a one-month fee. Against her better judgment, she agreed to see it. “Obviously, this place was great,” she said. But she wavered, uncertain about the location overlooking Tompkins Square Park, which she disliked at night.
She nearly fell victim to the bait-and-switch, reluctantly leaving a $500 deposit. “That is, like, everything I had in my checking account” she said.
When she decided against the place, the agent told her the deposit was nonrefundable. “He kept saying: ‘Read your contract,’ ” she said. But she had read it when she signed it: The deposit was nonrefundable after she had been approved as a renter. And she wasn’t yet approved, because she hadn’t even provided all the required financial information.
She was uneasy, too, because the price kept changing. First it was $1,700, then $1,650, then $1,800, then back to $1,700.
“Lesson learned: no brokers,” she said. “I felt so duped. It all hit me later.”
She did, however, get her deposit back.
A friend mentioned HowToRentInNYC.com, where Miss Movahedi learned she could circumvent brokers and avoid a fee by dealing directly with management companies, “which I never even though of as an option,” she said. “It was kind of a relief.”
The Web site included lists of management companies. She ventured farther north to check out a one-bedroom, for $1,850, on East 21st Street. “It was like police village over there, with a million cop cars,” she said, so she didn’t worry about security. (The New York City Police Academy is across the street.) The problem was the lack of a real kitchen — the apartment had just a kitchenette in the living room.
Later that day, she visited a well-kept Chelsea walk-up building. Two old but charming one-bedrooms were available, each with high ceilings, big windows and an eat-in kitchen. They were, no question, nicer than anything else she had seen.
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Ruby Washington/The New York Times
A one-bedroom on East 21st Street, near the police academy, lacked a real kitchen.
Ruby Washington/The New York Times
An affordable one-bedroom on East 12th Street was rented to someone else.
Miss Movahedi chose the one on a lower floor, but that was taken. Only when she returned to take measurements in the other did she realize there was no bathroom sink.
“Could I deal without a bathroom sink?” she asked herself. She slept on it, badly, and decided she could. “Every place I saw had one thing that bothered me,” she said. But everything else about this place seemed fine.
Besides, she knew of worse situations. “My hairdresser has no bathroom,” she said. “Just a water closet in the hallway.”
Unlike the agents she had encountered, the management company was in no rush. Miss Movahedi called constantly to shepherd her application along, negotiated the monthly rent to $1,850 from $1,895, and arrived last month.
She is gradually adjusting to life in an old building. “The thing that is strange for me is the imperfections I’m not used to,” she said. She must fit her furniture around random obstacles, like a heating pipe in the corner. A radiator precludes a full-size couch, so she bought a short one.
The long, narrow entrance hallway “serves no purpose,” Miss Movahedi said, so she added coat hooks on the wall. She’s grateful, at least, to have a living room closet. Some of her friends don’t.
She noticed that most of her neighbors kept their trash in the hallway. She soon realized that her own trash turns smelly faster than ever before. She can’t figure out why, but empties it often.
“It’s crazy what people put up with in New York,” she said.
When she announced that she was considering taking a place with no bathroom sink, one friend from Washington said: “Don’t sign! You are not living without a bathroom sink!” And she replied, “You don’t understand.”
The missing sink, however, doesn’t really bother her. Out of everything she could have given up, it’s not so bad.
“It forces me to do my dishes right away,” she said. “I make sure the kitchen is really clean.”
Thursday, October 8, 2009 at 02:11PM 
I have a basic question I think. I don’t want to pay a brokers fee. How do I find an apt on my own? My friend ended up renting an apartment she could have gotten on her own through a broker and is furious. I don’t want to make the same mistake.
I believe this question causes the most confusion for people who are new to New York City. What is the point of a broker? If you have read through