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JUSTIN PECK |
I’ve finally done it. I’ve beat the system, discovered the loopholes, hunted out the bargains, and ultimately completed my conquest of finding an apartment in NYC and furnishing it without breaking the bank (sorta). Here are the before and after pictures, so that you can see the transformation:
New York has just a god-awful broker system, where renters are forced to pay their apartment brokers usually 15% of the annual rent on the apartment. This fee makes entirely no sense, as my broker did all of 2-3 hours worth of work for my roommate and me. The broker fee itself came out a little less then $5,000 (yikes!). After that fee, the security deposit, and the first months rent, it left over very little for spending on furnishing our apartment. So what did we do? We got creative. We discovered a little San Francisco-based website some of you may have heard of, also known as Craigslist.
Here’s the thing: the value of furniture depletes immensely over time. Thus, there were endless amounts of bargains to be found of practically new furniture for a fraction of the original price. Examples: I bought an executive’s desk for $80, a dresser for $30, a stainless steel dining table for $50, the list goes on. My roommate David, who also happens to be a wonderful colleague at NYCB and one of my best friends, found the same sort of bargains as well.
Now, it’s not as easy as I’m making it all out to sound. The tricky part came with figuring out how to transport the furniture back to our apartment. We didn’t have a car. We didn’t even have a “dolly” to prop furniture on. Solution?? The NYC public transportation system! Of course! There are always people to be seen carrying fully assembled dining tables and such on the subway lines, right? Wrong. I can’t even begin to tell you how many looks David and I received when carrying a 7-foot bookcase onto the M107 (a bus line in New York). Or the glances of sympathy I got when I decided it would be a good idea (what was I thinking?) to pick up my 7 x 5 desk by myself (David was out of town) from 116th Street, and transport it via subway (I was only able to walk with it half a block at a time, before having to take a breather). Ya see? I knew lifting all those ballerinas so much would someday come in handy!
Ah, youth.
So the bargains to be had on craigslist, along with a few other deals hear and there (Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Overstock.com), made it possible for us to furnish our place for a fraction of the price one would normally pay. My advice? As long as you can withstand the funny looks from the little old ladies cruising on the M104—and the heavy lifting involved with transporting furniture—Craigslist is the best bargain in town.
David, exhausted yet satisfied after a hard day of furniture hunting (he’s going to kill me for putting this picture up, but its way too funny to pass up)
A[not so much] candid picture of David and me in our kitchen
~Roomies~
