Apartment hunting is bullshit

I’m looking for an apartment yet again – four times in my seven years in New York and I do not recommend it. Here’s what’s wrong with searching for a place to live in NYC.

• Craig’s list is bullshit. Any random jerk-off can put up a listing making the apartment sound like a freaking palace, but leave out the fact that by UES, they mean 148^th street.

• No fee rental sites are bullshit: They give details for apartments, but don’t post pictures, which means the place is too ugly to photograph, and they use words like “charming” which means cramped and “sun-drenched” which means the windows are broken and there’s no super to patch them up.

• Broker sites are total bullshit: They have all these amazing listings with beautiful photos of gorgeous apartments, but as you scroll through you notice the bathroom in every one of their listings is the same, the kitchen looks the same too. And then you realize they are just pasting the same freaking images for all of the apartments, which means they are not real listings, which means you wasted a half hour of company time reviewing them.

• Management companies are bullshit: They post listings for seemingly lovely apartments that totally fit within your price range, and when you call to inquire about the place they say that one is gone but they have another great availability that is only twice the price. And they only take cats, which is bs because cats suck way worse than dogs.

• Brokers are crazy bullshiters: First of all they are all on coke, like all the time. They try to sell you on every shitty property they have – because here’s the deal: They get paid when you sign a lease, if they can get you to sign a lease on the first place you see, then they made upwards of 3 grand for about a half hour’s work. Often they’ll take you to not their best availability – but the one they can’t sell off, hoping that you are the dumb schmuck who will agree to it. If you make them take you to see 15 places before deciding, they are cranky, and basically at this point they are done being nice to you and they’ll tell you that this is last apartment that will ever be on the market in NYC and if you don’t sign for it immediately then you will be living on the streets like a bum.

So essentially my life will suck for the next two weeks as I wrestle with each of these search options in an attempt to find my dream home, which in the end will be too small, too expensive, too noisy and infested with bugs. And then once I finally sign a new lease, I’ll post about how annoying moving companies are.