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Please help a desperate hacker: Looking for an apartment in NYC

4 points by DrorY ↗ HN
Hi all,

Me and my team have recently been accepted to Dreamit Venture's New York.

It's all really great, but we are coming from abroad. Trying to find a nice apartment in NYC from Israel is proving to be nearly impossible.

Apart of craiglist and AirBNB, what other solutions are there for finding reliable sublets from abroad?

7 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 33.2 ms ] thread
sebg
Hi - Here is a list of colleges / unis in the NYC area => http://www.ny.com/academia/colleges.html . Some of these colleges have student housing that they rent to others during the summer. Try emailing them all to see. I've stayed in NYU / Columbia / Barnard student housing in the past and had a good time. Good luck and congrats on being accepted into the Dreamit Venture summer program.
philipdlang
My company, Suitey, is a concierge service to help people find apartments in the city, but sublets are a particular difficult market because most leases don't allow people to sublet, so it's an underground market. Craigslist is unfortunately the best game in town unless you go for a super-expensive short-term rental.
photon_off
Your company, Suitey, spams craigslist.

While looking for an apt a few months ago, I'd come across postings several times a day matching the specific criteria I was looking for. They'd all look like decent opportunities, but upon further inspection they all turned out to be pointless links to your pointless service.

I was looking for 1brs with "union square" in the title. I can only guess at the total number of spammy posts you are responsible for on a daily basis.

It wasted a lot of my time and was very frustrating.

Shame on you.

warpspeed
Check out http://newyork.craigslist.org/jsy/sub/ . Hoboken and Jersey City are a 10-15 minute subway (PATH train) from midtown Manhattan and you'll pay a whole lot less in rent and things like groceries/beer. Also you actually can see the skyline of manhattan, which is pretty nice.
joeteplow
whats your email? I may have some room for you guys
DrorY
@joeteplow , this is my email address - dr.yaffe@gmail.com Thanks!
burrisj
Mazel tov on your acceptance!

Unfortunately, good subletting opportunities can be quite difficult to find most buildings explicitly prohibit the behavior.

I'm not sure how old you are, but depending on your age, you may be eligible for summer housing through studenthousing.org. NYU and Pace also have great summer dorming options, but they only offer housing for the entire summer rather than for specific time frames (which will likely be a problem given the nature of DreamIt's Israel-NYC time split).

Usually short-term rentals are very expensive (AirBNB certainly is), but http://www.nyhabitat.com/new-york-apartment.html seems to be the most reasonable provider around.

Of course, Craigslist is also always an option, but there are no guarantees and it helps to know a bit about each building/location first.

If you have any questions, I'd be happy to help out!