Deciding Where to Live

From the halcyon days of free rent and assigned rooms to a city-wide rat race with everyone seeking out the same small studio basement on the edge of town, finding that first post-grad apartment can be anywhere between thrilling and scary. To tip that scale closer toward the thrilling, you’ll need to be adequately prepared before you start the search. Going in blind will suck up an entire week’s worth of apartment hunting, seeing a slew of initial apartments that are all too expensive, too small, or too far from where you want to be. Why even venture to that one bedroom for five hundred dollars a month more than you can afford or that cheap studio that’s impossibly located a half an hour away from the nearest form of transportation? Having a clear sense of what you can pay, where you want to look, and how much space you need will save us both time and money. Better to spend those hours daydreaming about your future pad than slogging up flights of stairs only to find that the apartment of your dreams has a hotplate instead of a kitchen and a hole instead of a toilet.

Cost

Obviously, the first thing to figure out is how much we can actually afford. Leaving college means balancing paychecks with expenses for the first time, which can be difficult without experience. Things like cleaning supplies, toilet paper, and take-out can really add up, so make sure to account for all of those factors. Most experts suggest that a person’s rent should make up no more than a third of his or her monthly income. Now, if you’re making $50,000 a year before taxes that comes to at most $900 a month — not a lot for a city like New York where some parking spots cost $900 a month, but not necessarily impossible. One key to figuring out cost is to determine whether you want (or can afford) to live alone, or if you are going to have roommates. Living with roommates cuts down the cost of renting an apartment by a lot, but it can also compromise sleep and sanity. Check out our article on Roommates for more information and/or use our roommate finder. Either way, you have to start with a Budgeting Tool and play with a few different options to see how much you can actually afford. Just remember, be conservative with the budget and don’t forget the expensive intangibles like bottles of vodka and mounted deer heads.

Neighborhood

The cost of an apartment or house will vary greatly depending on the neighborhood. Moving in next to Jennifer Aniston (oh my god like oh my god do you think we’ll be besties?) will likely drive up the cost of the rent by a substantial margin. The key is to figure out what and who you want to be surrounded by. Different neighborhoods have different identities, so it’s important to tailor your search accordingly. Check out the list below and try to combine whichever elements are important to you to create one uber-hood.

• Foodie? Then find the neighborhood with the best restaurants so you can hit them up every night without the cost of a cab.
• Outdoorsman? Try to find a nice park so you can lay out in the sun on off days.
• Recent Grads? – There’s often a neighborhood full of nicely equipped highrises where fellow transplants first go. Great for meeting new people and getting into the social scene.
• Nightlife? Much better to stumble home from a club than stumble into a subway, fall asleep, and wake up at Gun Hill Road, as I did one fateful Saturday night.
• Chef? Let the groceries come to you and find a neighborhood rife with big markets and specialty food stores.
• Euro? Just look for fellow large sunglass and tight pants wearers and ask around.
• Gay? Almost always one area of town that is particularly gay friendly.
• Cultured? Live near the museums, get a membership, and spend lunch hours strolling through the hallowed halls of culturedom.
• Workaholic? Sometimes getting in those extra hours means living within walking distance or an easy drive/subway ride from the office. Don’t be ashamed, I used to actually live in the bar I was working at. But maybe that was for different reasons.