Help with rental agency in NY. Please! Forum

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Unagi

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Help with rental agency in NY. Please!

Post by Unagi » Tue Apr 08, 2014 7:24 pm

Hey!

I hope I'm not violating any rules for posting this.
I'm going to spend the summer in NY and yesterday I got rejected from the place that I applied to live - apparently they did not have any units available.
Now I'm going crazy trying to find a place. I've looked Craigslist and similar websites, but I'm very afraid of scams.
I found one apartment that I really like, and I would rent it through a real estate agency called KVNY. Does anyone know anything about them? Are they legit?

Thanks guys!

collegewriter

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Re: Help with rental agency in NY. Please!

Post by collegewriter » Wed May 06, 2015 1:20 pm

If you google them you see 8 negative Yelp reviews but they are all complaints about typical New York broker BS. Here is what to expect from the average broker (not scammer):

1. It is unlikely that the exact unit you are looking at will be available if the listing is more than 3 days old. This is just how it works here. This is not bait-and-switch. People here show up cash-in-hand the day a listing goes up.

2. They might be late. Brokers hustle here. I've had experiences of them being on time and them totally messing up. It's unprofessional and flakey but pretty standard.

Here's what scammers do:

1. Ask you to send money online/sight unseen/to a foreign country or shady address or any combination of these things. If it's too good to be true, IT IS. There are almost no amazing deals to be had in NYC and you should always keep that in mind when dealing with online postings or actual apartments.

2. Ask you for personal checks. Even a legit-seeming broker should not be asking for money paid to themselves. You should make it out to the company or the management company if it is first month's rent or security. Every situation varies but this is a good rule of thumb.

Check streeteasy and renthop (broker ratings) for the most legit listings. Craigslist is shady and most of those places will disappear before you can look at them. It seems like KVNY is ok. If you get a bad feeling then get out. Don't be afraid to use multiple brokers at once, despite what each will tell you about not doing that.

If you can--go to a luxury building where you deal directly with the management company and pay no broker fee. Nooklyn (brooklyn rentals) has many properties with no fee outside of luxury buildings. The one agency I remember being really shady is Ideal Properties. Yelp is your friend but take the reviews with a grain of salt. People mostly post when they are angry.

DesperadoOfColumbia

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Re: Help with rental agency in NY. Please!

Post by DesperadoOfColumbia » Sat Jul 25, 2015 4:00 am

Unagi wrote:Hey!

I hope I'm not violating any rules for posting this.
I'm going to spend the summer in NY and yesterday I got rejected from the place that I applied to live - apparently they did not have any units available.
Now I'm going crazy trying to find a place. I've looked Craigslist and similar websites, but I'm very afraid of scams.
I found one apartment that I really like, and I would rent it through a real estate agency called KVNY. Does anyone know anything about them? Are they legit?

Thanks guys!
If you're just here for the summer sublet for chrissakes. Very few agencies (namely - the ones that rent to foreign students) do short leases and the general rule is you need to make 40x the rent that year for the place.

Padmapper is your friend, but you should definitely sublet. Plenty of them around, nobody wants to be here for the summer.

Alternatively places like Brokelyn or any other neighborhood-specific blogs can help (Ditmas Park Corner, Bowery + whatever, EV Grieve, etc)

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