"Location Location Location" or The Art of Compromise

And so begins the next chapter of my real (estate) life…

It is official, I have done the impossible: I have moved from New Jersey, to New York City, to Connecticut, and now, I will be returning to The Big Apple.

After hours (and hours) of tireless searching for the perfect home to call our own on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, we’ve found it!

If you’re just joining us, let me take a minute to catch you up:

I have been living in Greenwich, CT for the last year and have been itching to get back into the City. Oftentimes, when people leave Manhattan to set up shop in “the burbs”, they never manage to make it back to New York; not I. In recent weeks, as I’ve prepared for my lease term to end, my game plan for moving back has changed substantially though. Once in hot pursuit of an affordable alcove studio, I have decided to live with a dear childhood friend of mine in a convertible 2 bedroom apartment; the only catch: we needed to find the place.

We agreed on a general area, the UES (and when I say general, I mean that could be from anywhere in the high 60s to the mid-90s from the East River to the Park), and a price range. We then embarked on what would be 7 hours of trekking around the aforementioned neighborhood with the two roommates, our mothers, the ManBoy, a broker, and no food (or coffee, for that matter). You do the math. Needless to say, somewhere amidst the starvation and the multiple type-A personalities (each with a different opinion, of course) I found myself in tears.

Nothing seemed to be that “just right” place for both of us. I loved a place in the mid-90s (2 blocks from the ManBoy) with a brand new pass-thru kitchen, a stunning roof deck, a gorgeous fitness facility that included a pool, an aerobics room and all kinds of classes, etc. etc. She wanted to be in the mid-80s where the “fun” was. We knew that once living as roommates, we’d be fine, great even, but we couldn’t quite agree on where.

After some negotiation, we went back to our broker and asked if there were any buildings in the mid-80s that had all the “stuff” that the mid-90s building had. There answer was yes, but there was only one, and it was above our previously expressed budget. Faced with the threat of derailing our plans and having to live alone, we agreed to see the building (and we knew it HAD to work).

We walked in and it was great! It was in the perfect location for her, and the amenities were suitable for me. The apartment is on a high floor, with tons of sunlight, a new kitchen, and (get this)…A WASHER AND DRYER IN THE UNIT! The rent is even a good deal less than we were expecting to pay. In other words, it is real estate heaven for two (very different) 20-something girls living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

In the next two weeks we have leases to sign, walls to build, movers to book and utilities to set up; but, we move in on June 1st and I absolutely cannot wait! New York City, here I come…again.