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sixth floor walkup Recently we received our lease renewal and learned that our rent was going up by 30%. Impossible! you say. They can't do that. Oh, but sadly they can, when your current lease includes a "preferential rent."

Most of the apartments I've had in NYC have been set up this way. It just means that the landlord is giving you a break from what he could legally charge based on past increases. It's usually because he couldn't rent it at the higher price. However, the lease clearly states both the preferential rent and the "real" rent, so if you were to move out the landlord could bump the rent straight up to the "real" amount if he so chose.

It is also the case that a new management company could swoop in and abolish all preferential rents as leases expire. Thus, the 30% increase from 07 to 08. Bastards!

So it was that we found ourselves in the market for a new apartment in the same year as our wedding. We'd originally planned to move this year, before we got engaged, but once we started hemorrhaging money with every wedding decision we made it seemed smarter to just stay put. Oh, fate, you cheeky bastard.

It was even more awesome to have to apartment search this month, the time Chris spends working 16 hour days at the baseball factory (which is also the college basketball factory nowadays, which creates a perfect storm of batshit insanity in the month of March) so he does not have any of that pesky free time to see apartments, pack, etc.

I do, however, have time so I resolved to take care of everything. I got in touch with a broker via Craigslist and made plans to see a few apartments last Wednesday. On my way to meet him I stopped in the rental place downstairs, the place that rented the apartment to Chris in the first place 5 or 6 years ago. And they began the process of breaking my spirit.

I've lived in NYC about a dozen years, more than half in Manhattan. I know it's expensive. Very expensive. "You pay HOW MUCH for 400 sq feet?" expensive. But even still, my mind just locked up and refused to accept the amounts they were throwing around. I mean, look. I'm ready, willing and able to pay the ridonkulous broker fee, security, first month, last month, whatever. But don't tell me there are no 1 bedroom apartments on the west side of Manhattan for less than $3000. The NY Times Real Estate "Hunt" column LIES. IT'S JUST NOT TRUE.

I didn't blame the broker, we've spoken before and she's decent, not just a sleazy upseller; as she said, if she found me a place she'd make double money: off my new apt and off re-renting my current one. But, much like the NY Times Real Estate section, she has a totally different frame of reference for what constitutes a decent apt. I don't need doormen and elevators and 800 sq feet minimum. We're simple people, we have modest needs. This is madness. Madness!

It just so happened that the apts I was going to be shown by Craigslist guy were through this agency so she was able to give me the keys to the 2 places he'd mentioned to me. The first was a ground floor 1 bedroom on Leroy Street. Awesome block, nice building, and the whole place barely bigger than our current living room (which is not big). The next was also location-rich, on King Street. A real one bedroom, probably the same sq feet as our current place. Nice light in the bedroom. But as you can see in the picture, it had one of those "kitchens" that was just a corner of the room with tiles. Oh, and it was a 6th floor walkup.

They won. Spirit broken, I called Chris and we decided to renew our current lease.
Posted by beth at March 26, 2008 02:13 PM