As of October 15th, 2006, my wife, my dog and I will be in our new apartment on Roosevelt Island, NYC. My 1.5 hour commute from Morristown, NJ is over.
Apartment hunting is never a fun process, and you always have to stay on point, ask the right questions and make sure you’re never getting suckered into anything. Many people turn to real estate brokers to do a lot of the leg work in finding the good apartments. Real estate brokers in Manhattan take approximately a 10-15% commission off of you. So if they find an property for you with a rent of say, $2000/month, this is the math:
$2000 x 12 months = $24,000 x .12 (12% commission) = $2,880
Maybe some of you are saying, “Eh, that’s not too bad.”
Fine, but remember that most of the time you’re going to have to factor in first and last months rent when you sign the lease:
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