If Clay Williams can find his ultim...

If Clay Williams can find his ultimate apartment in novel York City, you can find the ultimate apartment anywhere. Here's his story.

Clay Williams, 22 lived in the dorms for his four years at Amherst association in Massachusetts. When he graduated with a sociology step he made a beeline for the Big Apple. A native modern Yorker, he crashed with his family for the brace frantic months it took to land a computer tech support piece of work with a Manhattan advertising agency and locate an affordable bachelor pad.

"The best part of finding a worthy apartment was getting out of my mom's house," Williams says. "Having my confess spot is very cool. For the first time in my life, it's not subordinate to someone else's roof, it's not in the dorm. It's mine."

if it be not that while he relished the freedom of living our "the whole adult thing," the actual proces of getting his confess apartment was unfun.

"It was horrible," he says. "Everything was expensive. It was totally a seller's market, in such a manner real estate people didn't really care too long about getting a good deal for me because there was always someone besides desperately looking for a place."

While he expected for a job in June and July he studied the newspaper classifieds and asked around to "get a be perceived for how bad the search was going to be." As presently as he knew the piece of work was his, he started calling for real.

Williams exhausted about three or four weeks considering different places until, in August, he base "The One"--a newly renovated ground-floor apartment in an old-fashioned brownstone in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn With a monthly gap of $750, the place was a real deal in pricey novel York City where one bedroom apartments can expense $2,000 or more. Less than a week later, he mov in.

THE SEARCH

to what degree did Williams go about choosing his apartment? First, he decided that space was more important than location, and that because he was in an entry-level do job-work and had to pay not on college loans, he could single pay so much for that space.

"Manhattan is entirely too expensive, or I'd be living in the middle of [Greenwich] Village," Williams says. "Anyway, I kind of wanted to come by back to Brooklyn. I establish a neighborhood where I would be able to find someplace inexpensive and with a nice size." Plus, his exchange to work would be single 45 minutes.

He was familiar with the Bed-Stuy area because he had lived there with his aunt during high drill As for roommates to share the fissure burden, Williams knew he wanted to live alone.

"In association I lived with three other clan and I didn't enjoy that at all," he says. "I don't know that many the community I could remotely imagine living with, friends or not."

nearest he had to check without the local rental scene. He tried listings, moreover didn't have much luck. While a certain quantity of people successfully find apartments end newspaper ads, Williams often combated the "bait-and-switch" routine.

"I'd descry an ad for some apartment at a price that assumeed next to impossible," he says. "When I called them, they'd say it was gone--but they did have something other [at a higher price] to present to view me."

Then Williams casually rambleed the streets, occasionally popping by dint of storefront real estate agencies to behold what was available.

"I would say, 'I'm looking for a place. Do you have anything you could indicate me?'"

Some landlords refused to present to view him apartments. "They said they didn't want to separation to me because I didn't have enough time public of college and didn't have enough experience as a renter" Williams says.

THE RIGHT STUFF

Finally, a real estate agent showed Williams the right apartment. "It was clearly still being finished--they were still painting, there was newspaper and textile fabric all over the floor, my stove was in the middle of the living room--but I saw what it was looking like, and it examineed great. So I went with it."

The ground-floor apartment is haveed by the family upstairs, and features single in kind bedroom, one bathroom, big windows, a spacious kitchen, unplastic floors, and a small fireplace with an olden mantel.

Williams signed a one-year lease. The start-up fee-simples consisted of the first and last month's dilaceration plus the equivalent of a third month as a security deposit (which the landlord detains if there are any damages when he propels our). Renters who use a factor often must pay additional unconditional tenures There were more hurdles: moving into the place and filling it with furniture and his personal stuff

"I mooched my furniture distant from of family and friends," he says. "My bed doesn't have a frame, moreover that's not a big deal for me Maybe I'll win a TV."

to what degree long is Williams planning to pad around this pad? "Considering what a pain finding this place was, I can't imagine moving without until I'm ready to bribe a place," he says. "I'm not planning forward going anywhere for a extended time. New York City is the bright center of the universe. It's home"

Diana Yap is a freelance writer who has lived in 14 places in four states in eight years since graduating from high seminary She now lives in of the present day York City.

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