For Callum Hutchinson and Joey Solomon, juniors at New York University, two years of dormitory living was enough.
Mr. Hutchinson, 20, objected to the constant mess in his suite, where “no one saw the common areas as their responsibility to keep clean.” Mr. Solomon, also 20, disliked that his guests not only had to be signed in, but also signed out, with visitors unable to leave until the security guard found their names in a sheaf of papers.
So last summer, these friends and classmates, who met as freshmen while studying photography, decided to look for a two-bedroom off campus. Their budget was up to $3,000 a month.
Mr. Hutchinson, who is from Long Island, contacted Edward Henwood, a licensed salesman at Mirador Real Estate, who knew a friend of his mother’s.
He and Mr. Solomon, who grew up in Queens, initially wanted to live within walking distance of school, in Greenwich Village, but it was difficult to find something affordable there. They looked in the East Village and on the Lower East Side, but found cramped spaces. There were mostly two-bedrooms of vastly unequal size, in walk-ups on high floors.
Was their budget realistic?
“I don’t think so,” Mr. Henwood said.
One Lower East Side apartment, for $3,000, had two small bedrooms but no living room.
In another, a one-bedroom for nearly $2,900 on Delancey Street, the second bedroom had to be carved out of the living room, and the landlord intended to add some kind of frosted glass at the top of the partition wall to let in light.
Continue reading the main storyMr. Hutchinson also noted a lack of electrical outlets. “I don’t like the idea of feeling like I have to put a lamp here because there is only one place there is an outlet,” he said. “It constrains where you can put furniture.” And the room that would be the second bedroom didn’t even have a light switch.
Discouraged, they decided to head to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a short L-train ride from school.
“I know things are really expensive in Manhattan, but I am still surprised how much you have to pay for how little you get,” Mr. Hutchinson said. The extra expense of a MetroCard to take the subway to Brooklyn seemed negligible by comparison.
In Williamsburg, they were encouraged. A ground-floor apartment on Ainslie Street, for $2,900, was better than anything else they had seen, though they were not happy that one bedroom had windows on the street.
A top-floor unit on Driggs Avenue, renting for $3,000, was above a pizza place, but the apartment had high ceilings, exposed brick, a skylight and two similar-size bedrooms. Mr. Hutchinson and Mr. Solomon were interested. “There was an immediate reaction that we knew we were going to live here,” Mr. Solomon said.
Still, Williamsburg seemed so promising that they thought they might see something they liked even more.
On Bedford Avenue, they looked at a large two-bedroom railroad apartment that occupied a whole floor and included a dining room, for $3,100. But the layout seemed odd — one bedroom had two doors, one to the hallway and the other to the second bedroom — and the interior was rundown, with creaky floors.
Another apartment, on Graham Avenue, was within their budget at $2,850, but one bedroom was especially small. “It was an unfair distribution of size,” Mr. Solomon said. Also, the apartment was above a deli and didn’t feel homey.
They knew they wanted the apartment on Driggs, and Mr. Henwood suggested they not hesitate any longer. Mr. Hutchinson and Mr. Solomon used their parents as guarantors, paying a broker’s fee of 15 percent of a year’s rent, or $5,400. They moved in just before the school year started, in August.
Their apartment is comfortable and spacious, furnished primarily with hand-me-downs from Mr. Hutchinson’s mother, as well as items from Ikea.
And life above a pizza parlor?
“The pizza odor is stronger at certain times than others,” Mr. Solomon said. “If I have my windows open, it smells like I am in the pizzeria, which makes me hungry.”
But “no one is bringing me a pizza,” he added, “so it’s a little tantalizing.”
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