Finding a House Before you Have a Home

For those lucky enough to be moving to New York City from abroad, congratulations! Living and working in NYC is a constantly exciting and challenging experience, and having one of the world’s greatest cities as your playground is a great privilege.Still, moving is hard, and moving internationally is even harder. With everything to sort out (be sure to check out our guide on relocating to NYC), finding and securing a place to live can seem impossible. How do you know if you’re choosing the right apartment in the right neighborhood if you’re not even settled in the country yet?Have no fear. Interim housing — a place to live temporarily as you’re finding a permanent home — is a good way of easing the transition. It is also a much needed buffer between the chaos of moving and the commitments required of finding a New York City apartment.You need to consider that when you move to the US, there’s usually a six- to eight-week gap between the time when you arrive and when your shipped containers arrive. NYC temporary housing, with furnishings available, provides you with a workable place to live during that time.So what are some options?Whether you find an apartment through a broker or not, it’s important to understand the different types of temporary rentals available. Length of stay, services available, and the price all depend on the nature of the temporary housing you choose.A few common types of interim housing are:Extended stay hotels. Many hotels offer discounts on stays of weeks or more. The accommodations can range from a single hotel room with the bare essentials to an apartment-style suite complete with a kitchen and living room. There are hotel companies that specialize in this area exclusively; check outExtended Stay Hotels to get a feel for the range of facilities that are available.Candlewood Suites is also worth looking into.Corporate housing. Some companies offer temporary housing for their employees. If you’re relocating to New York City for work, check with your company to see if they offer this option. There’s also a lot of information available on sites like CorporateHousing.com. These short-term rental options can be an easy and affordable way of making the transition to your own apartment.Temporary apartments / Sublets. Some apartment buildings offer furnished, temporary apartments for short-term rental, and sublets often become available when a leaseholder is out of town for an extended stay and needs someone to take over their rent for that time. Subletting can be a good and cheap temporary housing option — but be careful about whom you sublet from, and know your rights and responsibilities. In recent years, Craigslist has become the go-to website for many New Yorkers for searching for sublets and temporary apartments, but do take the listings with a pinch of salt. The U.S. Craigslist site has something of a dubious nature to it, and you may find plenty of time-wasting scams or low quality options mixed in with the genuine offers. Also, be careful whenever you’re dealing with an individual you haven’t met before. One of our not-so-grand experiences with Craigslist was an apartment described to us as being in SoHo. When we met the owner on West Broadway, he walked with us for almost 15 minutes to an area very much not in that neighborhood! So ask for an address and pictures before setting out to see a place.So now you know the types of temporary housing available. But how do you find them? There are some great sites out there to help you with your search:Abodenyc.com describes itself as the “smart alternative” to bed and breakfasts, providing furnished apartments for short-term stays. Rates begin at $200 nightly for apartments in Manhattan. Its FAQ is worth reading, and you can see photos of its varying apartments in the Upper East Side, Midtown East, the Upper West Side, Midtown West, and Downtown.Oxbridgeny.com is a useful collection of leasing companies and helpful websites, with short-term rentals, townhouse rentals, furnished rentals, duplex rentals, and serviced rentals given their own category on the site.Oxford Prosperity Group covers all of Manhattan, and you can also search listings in individual neighborhoods. It allows you to set your own minimum and maximum price range while you search, and so it can be a great time saving tool for internationals moving here on a budget.Furnishedquarters.com provides contemporary, furnished apartments in several locations around the city and can be a good way to get to know the various Manhattan neighborhoods before making a more permanent commitment.We used their services when we first moved to New York, and the experience was as varied as the city itself. Our first stop was a studio apartment on 63rd Street. While the apartment was impeccable, we learned quickly that the traffic and noise coming from the nearby Midtown tunnel just wasn’t for us. Our next stop: a one-bedroom apartment in a newly built high-rise in Chelsea. We loved the area, but didn’t love the feeling of living in a cookie-cutter apartment. So we tried yet another location, a quiet and comparatively spacious one-bedroom in a pre-war building on a tree-lined street on the Upper West Side. We loved the neighborhood and the feeling of a pre-war, so ended up permanently renting a place close by.In addition, easily searchable directories of rentals such as HomeAway have plenty of options ranging from nightly to monthly. And last not but least, for those of you coming here on a budget, CouchSurfing might be an option, too, though we doubt that many hosts will keep guests for more than a week in Manhattan.Some Other TipsFind storage for anything you won’t immediately be able to moveIf your belongings arrive in the US before you find a place to live, you’ll need to put them in storage. Though interim housing can be a great place to live for weeks or months if need be, the apartments you’ll find often don’t have enough space to be able to hold a lifetime’s worth of belongings. If you take a furnished apartment and your own furniture arrives before you find a permanent home, then storage is a must.There are a number of storage options in the New York area, ranging from spaces that cost about $30 a month to well over $100 a month. Some amenities may include climate control, alarm systems, delivery of boxes, and inventory maintenance.Visit first!We recommend that you visit New York about two or three months before your big move. This way you'll get a feel for how things work in the city, and you’ll have the chance to scout out the best areas — even for your interim housing location! The New York housing market can be a fierce place, so almost as soon as you have your temporary housing sorted, you’ll need to get out there and go hunting.