Finding an apartment in New York City feels like waiting
for a subway that’ll never arrive, while someone plays an electric sitar
on the platform, and another person pees on you. Now,
while the entire process is awful,
trying to decipher NYC’s notoriously confusing real estate terminology
is enough to make you crazy. Like, full-blown, “I’m going to rent
street-level on Avenue D because I no longer give a rat’s ass whether I
live or die”-type of crazy.
But before you do that, read this: a glossary of 20 of NYC’s most
ludicrously dishonest real estate terms, and what they all actually
mean.
"Sun-splashed, sun-washed, and sun-soaked": You’ll
open the curtai— SWEET FIERY HELL! THE REFLECTION OFF THAT HIGH RISE!
IT’S MAGNIFYING THE RAYS! MY RETINAS! AAAAAAAAAGHHHHHH!
“Broker”: Constantly late and consummately
unprofessional, you will nonetheless pay this person $11,000 for
services best summed up as “opening a door” and “lying to you about
what’s inside”.
"Recently renovated": Between tenants, multiple
plumbers went and sledgehammered various surfaces while smoking four
packs of unfiltered cigarettes each, then jacked copper fittings from
the condemned building next door. Also: there’s a condemned building
next door!
"Exposed brick": The contractor ran
out of sheetrock, which is perfect, because you’ve always said you
wanted to pay an extra $50/month to have masonry cement crumble into
your clothes/bed/food.
"Rooftop access": Either 1) it’s a high rise, and the
beautifully finished sun deck will be crawling with roughly 400 Blue
Moon-drinking I-bankers wearing “America: Back 2 Back World War Champs”
beach tanks, or 2) it's a walk-up, and you’ll lose three pairs of
Havaianas to the melty tar paper. In both cases, it’s worthless nine
months out of the year.
"Live-in super": A basement-dwelling caretaker who
blacks himself out on home-distilled grain liquor every damn day. You’d
call the cops, but then there’d be no one to fix your radiator. You lose
sleep knowing that this man has a key to your apartment.
"Elevator building": The only tenant brave enough to
use that 3'x3’ metal death-box is Muriel, the ancient,
rent-control-holdout on the ninth floor who drinks grain liquor with the
super and gambles her social security checks up at Aqueduct twice a
month. She’s twice the man you’ll ever be.
"Affordable": HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
"Tasteful fixtures": Are breakfast counters
technically “fixtures”? Either way, this one isn’t bolted to the floor,
and looks to be reinforced with a 1992 Erector Set.
"Views": HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
"Up-and-coming neighborhood": Freelance graphic
designers who somehow own cars Instagram that mural on the wall of Key
Foods daily. You’ll be pissed when Konditori opens on your block, even
though the bodega coffee gave you an ulcer, and the atrocious
residential Wi-Fi makes it impossible to work in your apartment.
"Vaulted ceilings": 10ft by the windows, but the downward slope is severe enough that you have to hunch your way to bed, Being John Malkovich-style.
"Partial views": HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
"Emerging neighborhood": If you convince someone to
sleep with you, it’ll never happen in your own bed, because no cabbie
will take you to “East Crown Heights”... because no one calls
Brownsville that except for that dirty, lying realtor who rented you the
place. Congratulations on saving $100 a month!
“Fun & safe neighborhood close to the BEST restaurants and bars!”:
You’re paying $2,000/month for a partitioned flex-two with no shower.
Every night, a fat Bucknell alum will stumble out of The 13th Step to
vomit on your front step.
"Transit-accessible": The nearest subway station is
four avenues away. You’ll eventually learn the crosstown bus schedule,
but despite your sermons on its remarkable efficiency, your friends will
never visit you. Ever.
"Plentiful parking nearby": HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
"Partially furnished": In any other context, the
bubble tea stains and obvious bedbug larvae would make this couch
garbage. But your lazy-bastard landlord didn’t bother removing it after
the previous tenant, so now it’s yours! Say thank you!
"Easy walk to [supermarket]": You won’t quite “trust”
the meat, or the produce, or the fish, or most of the dairy, but it’s so
convenient. Several bouts of food poisoning later, you’ll begin riding
the subway to/from Trader Joe’s like everyone else.
"New appliances": The refrigerator may’ve started out
white, but now it’s closer to “armpit”. The stainless steel dishwasher
will begin corroding within three cycles. Eventually, you’ll max your
out-of-network health coverage seeking treatment for the chemical burns
you got from touching it.
So now that you’ve carefully studied this glossary, you’re ready to
wheel & deal your way into a Big Apple abode, right? Wrong! It may
seem obvious here, but this real estate word-trickery is much harder to
recognize in its natural habitat: the Craigslist apartment posting. To
give you a fighting chance, we translated a normal NYC listing into what
it really means:
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