Leaving your comfortable life behind and moving to a new, unfamiliar city can be a bit intimidating and overwhelming. Especially when that new city happens to be New York.
That being said, putting down roots in the concrete jungle and joining the daily grind can also be an extremely exciting experience. From the bustling streets to the glittering skyscrapers, New York City has an unwavering energy that will make you feel like anything is possible.
After all, they don’t call this place the “City of Dreams” for nothing.
After all, they don’t call this place the “City of Dreams” for nothing.
Once you decide to make the big move, you’ll quickly discover that getting settled in isn’t always as easy as it may seem. From the headache of apartment hunting and the struggle to find roommates, to expensive fees and lengthy lease agreements, getting an apartment can be a real pain.
However, one tech-driven start-up, Bedly, is on a mission to make the process of moving to NYC a lot easier. So, you can stress less about your living situation and spend more time building your new life in the Big Apple.
bedly Entryway into our 4BR/1.5BA beautiful Bushwick apartment. Click the link in our bio to see available rooms.
One of the first things you’ll need to do is find a place to live. This is where the struggle begins. Finding an apartment can be a daunting task for seasoned New Yorkers, let alone someone who is new to the concrete jungle.
The timeline for finding a new apartment in NYC is normally a month to a few weeks before you want to move in. This can be pretty nerve-wracking if you’re the type of person who likes to have their living situation planned out in advance. In addition to the stress of finding a place to live on the fly, New York City is notorious for having a fiercely competitive housing market. This means you have to act fast and make a big decision in a very short amount of time.
Between combing through apartment listings, meeting with realtors, viewing apartments in person and submitting paperwork for applications, finding and securing an apartment is a rapid process that requires a lot of time and effort. Therefore, if you’re not living in the area it can be very costly and time consuming to travel back and forth just to see apartments. Not to mention, you’ll probably miss out on some great apartment deals if you’re not available to look at places as soon as they come on the market.
Bedly takes the hassle out of apartment hunting by making it easy to find a new place right from your computer.
Bedly takes the hassle out of apartment hunting by making it easy to find a new place right from your computer. All you have to do is browse through Bedly’s housing network, which can be filtered by price and location, to find an apartment.
Each Bedly apartment listing comes with an accurate description of the space and lots of photos. You can rest assure that you won’t see fabricated descriptions of a “cozy downtown 1 bedroom” that turns out to be a glorified closet in Newark. Plus, Bedly also has a special feature that allows you to take a virtual 3D tour of the apartment. That way, you can be sure that you won’t have any surprises when you finally see the place in person.
Once, you find the perfect place, you can complete the booking process online within minutes.
Choosing the Right Neighborhood
Another big problem that many outsiders face is figuring out where exactly to live. New York City is a pretty big place with a lot of diverse neighborhoods. In addition to different housing prices and local attractions, each neighborhood also has its own vibe.
Do you want to live on a busy Midtown block, a quiet street on the Upper East Side or a trendy neighborhood like Williamsburg or Bushwick? These are all questions you need to ask yourself. It’s also important to take things such as your daily commute to school or work into account.
Do you want to live on a busy Midtown block, a quiet street on the Upper East Side or a trendy neighborhood like Williamsburg or Bushwick?
Bedly tries to make this decision a little easier by providing information about nearby subways and neighborhood attractions on each apartment listing. Plus, Bedly makes it easy to move to different apartments within their housing network. So, you can move around and try out different neighborhoods until you find the perfect match.
Applications and Qualifications
bedly This 3BR/2BA apartment in Bushwick has a video intercom system & remote controlled AC in every room!
New York City apartments can have some pretty intense application processes. Most applications require you to submit a lot of paperwork, including a letter of employment, pay stubs, tax returns, deposit statements, and references from previous landlords.
In order to sign for an apartment, you must have a good credit score and have an annual income that is 40 times the monthly rent. To put that into perspective, you would have to make $140,000 a year to be approved for an apartment that costs 3,500 a month. For most students and young professionals looking to move to the city, this is pretty unrealistic.
In order to sign for an apartment, you must have a good credit score and have an annual income that is 40 times the monthly rent.
If you don’t meet the qualifications, you can have a guarantor co-sign the lease for you. But let’s be real, not everyone has a guarantor available to them and sometimes, you can even run into problems if your guarantor lives out-of-state.
Bedly, on the other hand, has a simple and easy application process that can be done online. To book an apartment, all you have to do is fill out a simple form with your personal information, pass a background check, and provide a valid payment method. It’s quick, easy and painless.
Relocating to New York City can be extremely costly. It all starts with the application fees, which will set you back somewhere around $100 each. If you’re planning to use a guarantor, some brokers will even make you submit two applications. Next, you’ll have to fork over first month’s rent and a security deposit that’s equivalent to at least one month’s rent. There’s also broker’s fees, which can cost up to 15% of your total 12-month rent. Not to mention, the cost of furnishing your apartment or hiring a moving company to lug your existing furniture to your new place.
Now let’s break this down into numbers. For an apartment that costs $3,500 a month, you’d have to pay a $100 application fee, a $3,500 security deposit, $3,500 for first month’s rent, $6,300 in broker’s fees, and approximately $400-$600 for movers. That’s adds up to about $14,000 and it doesn’t include the cost of monthly utilities or Wi-Fi, either.
Plus, all Bedly apartments come fully furnished with everything you need from linens to cookware, which makes moving hassle-free and a lot cheaper.
If you’re not trying to shell out your life savings on a New York City apartment, Bedly can help you save some major bucks. Bedly apartments are pretty affordable and don’t have expensive applications or broker fees. Plus, all Bedly apartments come fully furnished with everything you need from linens to cookware, which makes moving hassle-free and a lot cheaper. If that’s not convincing enough, the cost of Wi-Fi and utilities are already set up and included in your rental price. Seriously, talk about a great deal.
bedly Loving this room in our newly listed 4BR/2BA apartment in Bushwick. Click the link in our bio to see more!
Since living in the city can be expensive as all hell, a lot of New Yorkers live with roommates to offset the cost of rent. However, finding a good roommate in New York City can be like finding a needle in a haystack. Oftentimes, people resort to finding a roommate on Craigslist when they can’t find a roommate in their friend circle. As you can imagine, inviting a stranger from Craigslist to live with you for an entire year can be risky business. Sometimes things work out just fine, but if the person turns out to be a bad roommate or a complete sociopath, you’re stuck with them until the lease is up.
As you can imagine, inviting a stranger from Craigslist to live with you for an entire year can be risky business.
Bedly makes the process of finding a roommate easier than ever. All you need to do is move into one of their shared apartment units and they’ll figure out the roommate situation for you. The majority of Bedly renters are students or young professionals and all of Bedly’s renters are required to pass a background check. So, you can rest assure that you won’t be living with a low-key serial killer. Plus, Bedly makes it easy to move to a different apartment in their network if you decide that you want to live with different roommates down the road.
A big downside to living in New York City is getting locked into lengthy lease agreements. In most cases, you’ll have to commit to a 12-month lease that has some costly consequences if you decide to break the lease early.
Committing to a year-long lease can hard when you’re young and constantly going through changes in your life. Whether it’s moving for job opportunities, transferring schools or relocating to be with a significant other, you never really know where life is going to take you.
Bedly understands that life can be unpredictable.
Bedly understands that life can be unpredictable. That’s why it offers both fixed-term and flexible rental agreements. If you know exactly how long you'll be staying, you can save a little money on your monthly rent by choosing a fixed-term lease. Or, if you’re not sure how long you’ll need a place, you can opt for a month-to-month rental agreement and stay for as little or as long as you want-- which is a helluva lot better than the minimum one-year commitments required by most landlords in NYC, amirite?