CitiHabitats

they are the biggest rental broker in the city and you must pay a fee to work with them.

stay away from them...they are living in the past

How else to rent? Related has very few larger apartments as do the other direct options. Are all large apartments coops? I don't want to work with a broker but don't know how to find what we need.

what are you looking for?

you can go with citihabitats but make it clear that you want a no fee apartment. You're looking for a large apartment in this market LLs would be very happy to pay the fee to have you as a tenant.

Full 3 bedroom + maid's or 4 bedroom. Good size LR and DR (for entertaining) and outdoor space ideally. Carnegie Hill, West Village.

Can I use a broker and still get the LL to pay the fee and give me one month free?

lo888, that will depend on how desperate the landlord is.

If you search for apartments on nyt.com you will see a lot more listings than streeteasy has. It also will show you how long an apartment has been listed. If you can find one that has been on the market 30+ days you stand a much better chance of getting concessions from the landlord.

Stay away from CitiHabitats! I had a very, very bad experience them several years ago. Basically, I was in an inhabitable apartment and out of pocket thounsands of dollars in fees. They live up to every bad broker stereotype. Not to mention the fact that they poorly manage their clients's private information (who can dig up that article where a CitiHabitat's office on the UWS somehow had scatter all of their clients' private info like cc numbers, credit checks, etc all over the streets?) Their brokers have no ethics. I'm sure there are a few nice ones, but the probability is not on your side.

I saw an article like that and that concerns me a lot too. I also was just looking at their website and they have lots of apartments list 2 or 3 times with different descriptions.

lo888 I would be happy to work with you in the West Village, raised two children there and have worked in the neighborhood for 17 years. Email me off line or call and we can discuss, I can also help you figure out the addresses of most of those CH's listings you come across.
www.theburkhardtgroup.com

Of my last 6 rental deals 4 were no fee, one was half a month fee and one was $1000 dollars.

BEWARE OF SHITY-HABITATS! There is a very good reason the majority of their listings dont have addresses or pictures........THEY DONT EXIST. A very good friend of mine used to work for them and so one day (after seeing hundreds of amazing sounding listings) I asked him what the deal was. Since he had just quit, he kind of laughed and leveled with me. He said that the overwhelming majority of shity-habitats listings are completely made up. The idea is to get you to call, and then they say "sorry that one just rented, BUT I have another great one (with a fee of course)". The reality is that the original place didnt exist, and their entire rental business is based on bait and switch. In all honesty I wouldnt be surprised if 50% to 60% of their listings are total bogus. STAY AWAY FROM SHITY-HABITATS.........

I almost took an apartment through an agent but asked to have the LL pay the fee and the LL said yes very quickly. Contact a reputable agency and tell them what size, location area apt. you want BUT you want a no fee apartment.

Run from rental brokerage slime!!!! Columbiacounty is bang-on in his assertion that they are living in the past. If you need to use a broker -and sometimes you must, I second Julia's comment, call one of the reputable brokers such as Corcoran, Halstead, Douglas Ellman etc etc. Let them earn their fee and have them validate the listings for you. Remember EVERYTHING is negotiable now.

Stay away from CH - use Corcoran or one of the other established shops.

Have you tried adding "must have address" to your search? Gets rid of most of the crap listings. Most of the listings should be condo or coop with a reputable listing brokerage firm. No clue as to current state of things in terms of one month free or paying the broker's fee when it comes to renting from an owner, but my advice is not to sweat it too much. Well-priced condos / coops were by far much better values than rentals even after accounting for a broker's fee when I was looking, especially in the market for higher-quality places. Most people have an unreasonable aversion to paying a broker's fee, and as such, overpay by only looking at rental listings. Also, contacting the listing broker directly is the best way to go: less parties to pay in the end means more room for negotiation.

I'm trying to find a livable 2 br apt for a feasible price and this kind of just seems to good to be true

http://www.streeteasy.com/nyc/rental/428237-gramercy-park-gramercy-park-new-york

given what's been said about cithabitats here... does anyone think this exists? or should I move on? I'm new at this (will be renting my first apt in the city) and would really appreciate guidance from more experienced individuals, thanks!

I can tell you just by looking at those pictures that its a complete farce. First of all, they arent even photos they are computer generated images. Secondly, its listed as a non-doorman building yet the last 'image' seems to show some sort of lobby/lounge complete with a bar and fully attended service area. I call 100% complete BULLSHIT. Classic SHIT-HABITATS at its finest!

for your own education, if you can stand it, you should give the agent on this listing a call and ask to be shown the apartment in the pictures. Most likely he/she will tell you that it just rented but that he has many more just like it. ask him to email you the specific listings that he had in mind and see where that takes you.

i am not suggesting that any of this will end up getting you a decent place but sometimes it is best to experience things for yourself otherwise the stuff that you read on these postings will seem over the top, crazy.

good luck

Wecohen, these photos are from Peter Cooper Village website. The rents are quite reasonable there but it's not "in" Gramercy Park. If you are interested, you can contact the management directly, no need to go through Citi-Habitats. In fact, if you see any listing referring to "big outdoor space" or "park" in the Gramercy/East Village area and mid-rise non-doorman building, it will likely be StuyTown/Peter Cooper.

additional reading to fill in your education about peter cooper and stuyvesant town.

http://nymag.com/realestate/features/53797/

wec = that is a convertible 2. Look for a large jr 4 and you can convert that nicely to a 2br and probably get an extra 1/2 or full bath as well - much better price than official 2br 2bth

I live in Peter Cooper. I don't have a lot of positive things to say about the landlord (although our building people have been with us for years and are GREAT, and things do get fixed pretty quidkly despite the press). I moved in 5 years ago and my rent then for a large 2/2 started at around $2700, high floor. The price listed in that ad doesn't seem that unreasonable (although probably not accurate right now) for a Stuy Town 2/1, which is significantly smaller than the Peter Cooper 2/2. There are good things (quite a few, actually) and bad things (location is awful, although lower Stuy Town is on the edge of the East Village, which would make it great to me, what a difference 9 blocks can make) about living here, but I've found the residents, with the exception of a few college kids who may just be uncomfortable, delightful. We don't live in a constant state of anxiety and warfare here, despite the press.

East18...peter cooper rents are quite reasonable...one bedrooms at $3100, no doorman isn't reasonable in my opinion. Peter Cooper is even higher. aboutready...i'm curious what your increases were over the five years..i've been inside the peter cooper apts and they are huge but their prices have gone way too high for me.

Julia, I'm currently at slightly over $4000, no rent increase for most recent renewal. Overpriced, I think, but not so much so that I'd bother to move prior to purchasing. I had heard that in the summer of 2007 management was increasing rents for renewals on my type of apartment (they have a strange scale based on floor and "desirability" of building, which is based on location), to $6000. I always do my damndest to sign contracts to buy/leases to rent in the winter, and I'm glad I did so here.

The lack of a doorman doesn't bother me in the slightest. Crime is virtually nonexistent here, and they have services (for a fee, of course) that can do virtually anything. Because of the lack of doorman, however, these are hard apartments to comp. The renovations are quite lovely, and you don't find this quality in many non-doorman buildings.

lo888, as burkhardt will make you aware if you end up working with him, there isn't much inventory like that in the West Village -- you'll be looking at townhouses that cost in a range of $15K-20K, mostly, and I don't know that I'd consider them the greatest entertaining units. When you do find an apartment like that -- there's something at 99 Jane, I think -- the BRs will all be stacked against each other and it's unlikely that you'll end up getting the landlord to eat the fee with one month free.

In general the apartment that you want, the cost structure that you want, and the neighborhoods that you want are not in sync with each other, so you'll have to think about which you're ready to give up.

ali r.
{downtown broker}

Thanks Ali. What about Gramercy or Carnegie Hill? Am I stuck with a 2 year max lease on most coops?

I have a client moving out of a 1800 square foot three bedroom at 95 Horatio street in June. the rent will be approx. $7500-$8000 per month.

well, lo, there you go -- I would try to preview Keith's Horatio Street place and if you like it, grab it -- just not a ton of stuff in the WV. A little more in Gramercy because there are a few more big buildings -- I can't speak to Carnegie Hill 'cause I really don't work up there.

ali r.
{downtown broker}

^^oh, and to your question about lease terms -- it varies building-by-building. I would say generally, "yes" -- but if we stay in this down cycle for a while and co-op boards have the choice of letting sales go through at lower prices or letting their owners extend subleases for a third year, they'll pick the third year -- so if the big bears are right, you'll see a little more flexibility going forward.

ali r.
{downtown broker}

glenwood has 3 br + dr... no fee

Not all brokers are the same....I LOVE my cit-habitats broker. She is honest, smart and has worked her butt off for me. As for Peter Cooper, I live there now (my citi-habitats broker sold my apartment) and there is something to be said for running the a/c 24/7 all summer long and not paying extra for it.

Yeah Smacstein - Wasting energy. Turn it off if you don't need the ac...jeez.

Unfortunately Peter Cooper is so damn hot on the higher floors that you have to run the a/c in the winter just to get some humidity in the air or your skin might crack. Just opening the windows doesn't seem to cut it (and you have to pay to have special screens put in if you want to avoid bugs and/or not have your cat jump out, and it's over a hundred dollars per tiny window.)

And they are trying to submeter so we WILL have to pay extra for it. But they still won't be able to control the heat because of how the system was set up. So I'll get to pay for a/c even in the winter.

UESBandit: In order to put a listing on the Citi-Habitats site, the apartment has to be currently available, and in our database. The ads also get deleted once the apartment gets rented out, so either you're a liar, or your "friend" is.

To the original poster: Search through brokerages sites, and if you find a listing that you're interested in, call and ask if it's "no fee." They'll either give you a bs answer about it being rented, tell you that there is a fee, or you'll be able to go look at a no fee apartment that you've already seen pictures of and liked. It shouldn't take you more than a minute or two each time.

The other option is to find a broker you trust, and ask them to show you just "no fee" apartments. Just because an apartment is no fee to you, does not mean that the broker is not getting paid. I personally prefer to show "no fee" apartments because I get paid anyway, my clients feel like they got something for free, and are more likely to work with me in the future because of it.

I’ve been working with a group of 4 guys looking for a 4 bedroom in the West Village for the last month, and there was very little I could show them (even less of it was no fee). There’s a townhouse on Bleecker that could be used as a 4 bedroom, it has a private backyard, and access to the roof. It’s listed through another brokerage at $8000 (the other brokerage would charge a fee, but it's an insane deal).
Not in an area you specified, but there’s a huge 4 bedroom in Turtle Bay (near the UN), that’s listed at $6400, and would be no fee (unfortunately, there’s no outdoor space).

In regard to Condos and Co-ops. You're less likely to find them with no fee because it would be the individual owner of the apartment paying the fee, and very few are willing to do that.

Hope this helps.