How to Find a New Apartment
1. Craigslist
2. Twitter
3. Facebook
4. Ads in the back of alternative weeklies
5. Mass emails to all of your friends
6. Listservs
7. Bulletin boards in coffee shops
8. Self-serving blog posts (Do you know anyone looking for a roommate in Brooklyn? I’d love to interview them for a piece I’m working on—the piece is called “Help I need a new place to live.” Sources will be kept confidential, as ever. logan@thebillfold.com )
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Previously on The Billfold
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oh no, Logan, is it the bedbugs? :(
it’s the specter of the bedbugs. and everything else.
@Logan Sachon moving is the worst. but then you’ve moved. and it’s the best. hang in there! (I find the mass e-mails usually get the best results, personally.)
@Logan Sachon “A spectre is haunting Brooklyn — the spectre of bedbugs. All the powers of old New York have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: tabloid and broadsheet, blog and tumblr, French Radicals and German police-spies.”
@stuffisthings “Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to the bedbugs, and carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in a broken lease and forfeit of security deposit.” (hey book agents: The Bedbug Manifesto, hit me up if you’re interested)
I’m the leasing manager for a holdings company in NY and I have a twitter and FB account setup in my company name, although I dont know how to use them exactly for listing.
Would love some ideas.
I would move to Brooklyn for the chance to live with you Logan!
helpful. reeeeeal helpful.
Um, Logan, I’ll move to Brooklyn or you can move to Somerville in MA. Either way, we can “make it work.” :)
I have a really awesome friend desperately looking to fill a room in Woodside if you’re willing to not live in Brooklyn.
Padmapper! Way easier to navigate than Craigslist, and it has all their listings as well as listings from other sites shown on a map, plus super-useful filtering/search tools. At least in San Francisco, it is by far the best way to find an apartment.
@maiasaura I love Padmapper, except when it reminds me that my price range is like 20 miles outside of the city I live in. :(
@maiasaura Also, Padmapper recently (as in in the middle of my apartment search in a city I don’t know very well) got a cease-and-desist from Craigslist, so they can’t show those listings anymore. BYE-BYE PADMAPPER.
@mirror_father_mirror They found a workaround. Padmapper is back!
@maiasaura I definitely second padmapper. I’m pretty sure we would not have been able to find our new place without it. I really hope they are able to sort this mess out with craigslist, though, since it seems ridiculous to get sued over improving on and driving more visitors to craigslist’s listings.
AW LOGAN I would totally live with you had I not just signed a lease with my friend.
Ugh I just started looking for places in DC. Utter madness. It’s like a combination of speed dating, scavenger hunt, and drug deal, but more costly and with greater repercussions.
@stuffisthings I’m still having PTSD flashbacks from my last apartment-hunt in this city. It is the most competitive housing market I have ever imagined.
I have been waiting for my lease to end for months so I can move, and I know that when the time comes, it is all going to come down to who has openings in a 3 day period in mid-September – like, the week before my lease ends – because heaven forbid anybody advertise an apartment that is not available immediately.
Oh, FYI everyone, Express today had an article about alternatives to Craiglist that may be helpful. I think most if not all of these are non-DC-specific.
@stuffisthings Ah, Urban Igloo. Where the minimum rent is $1400/month.
I actually really like that Lovely site though!
A friend is moving to Boston in a couple weeks. She lives in Windsor Terrace (?), but I think she has her own place, but I don’t think it’s crazy expensive. Shall I inquire for you?
Sorry, Logan! I presume you can’t do the “drive around until you see a for rent sign” in NYC like I did in LA right? I second the Padmapper suggestion as well!
I have a friend looking for a sublettor in Brooklyn, at 153 Roebling, which looks like Williamsburg/Green Point. For August and September.
@selenana subletter!
I also need a roommate in Brooklyn! I can’t seem to find someone as broke as me because everyone is rich and can afford way more than I can.