Getting our first apartment

flamebroiledchicken

So, my friend and I want to finally get the hell out of our parents' houses and get an apartment in NYC (we both go to school in the city). This will be our first experience with finding/renting an apartment, so neither of us has any idea what we're doing. I lived in an apartment with some people last semester, but I was just invited to live there, I didn't have to sign onto a lease or do anything besides give them money every month.

Here is what we've done so far:
"Want to get an apartment?"
"Sure"
"Let's start looking on craigslist"
"Okay"

We both know how to use craigslist, and we know what price range we're looking for.

1. Do we just start calling every craigslist entry that looks good and set up a showing?

2. When we go to a showing, what should we bring? What should we ask? How should we act? What should we know?

3. Are there any neighborhoods we should avoid? Most of the stuff in our pricerange is in Bushwick or Bedstuy (Brooklyn), and some in Harlem, Morningside, and Columbia (Manhattan)

4. Anything else we should know? We are literally starting from ground zero here.

KalTorak

I'm pretty much as in the dark as you, but when going to showings it seems like a good idea to bring a camera so you can remember each place you look at distinctly.

MichaelLC

If you're renting together, you'll want to decide the money things first.

- Are you both co-signing? Or just one, and the other pays you in change/firewood?

- Who's buying food/paper towls, etc.

- Groundrules about friends, G/B/MFs.

For renting, be preapred to sign on the spot if you're interested. Will need a checkbook and/or cash, plus some IDs. May want to run your credit report so you know if the landlords are trying to mess with you.

Make sure you get a signed (by you & the landlord) copy of any and all paperwork.

Tooter-Fish

I'm not sure how the apartments are in that area but some of the things I've started looking for in apartments over the years are...

1.If it's a 2 bedroom, make sure the bathroom is in the hallway and not between the 2 rooms, to me there's nothing more irritating than someone having to go through my bedroom to get to the bathroom. Especially if you have company (wink, wink) with you.

2.Location of where you bedroom is to the common room. Basically, you don't want your headboard to be right where the TV is on the other side of the wall. You'll be trying to sleep while roomie is playing vidya games on the other side of the wall.

3.Look for plenty of electrical sockets, I rented an apartment once that had one socket in the common/living room. So we ended up with extension cables going all over the place. We were lucky not to have burned the place down.

4.If you can find out how many circuits are in unit. The reason for this is for when summer time rolls around, you're both surely going to want an AC in your room (and probably in the common room). If your on the same circuit as him you may not be able to run them both at the same time.

5.Make a little pact with your roomie that you each will say something to the other if something they are doing starts to bug you, those little things can grow into giant monsters if you just keep sitting on them and stewing about it.

That's all I got for now