Looking for Houses
Jul. 9th, 2009 08:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unforthSo yesterday, I spent the entire day wrestling with big scary stuff related to house buying, and now I just need to gather my thoughts. I spent yesterday morning gathering up financial documents - because I put everything in storage, I needed to request copies of my taxes for 07 and 08 and such. Fortunately, this was all relatively accessible, which was nice. I'm still short a couple things I need - particularly, my 1099s. After that, I sat and figured out how this whole mortgage thing works, and messed around until I worked out if I can marshal a 20% down payment.
The money part is complicated. To put it short, I'm not really prepared, financially, for this yet. I've got a pile of money in my savings account, but ultimately that money needs to go to the IRS, or I'll be in serious trouble. The flip side of that is that buying a house now will save me a large amount on my taxes - $8,000, as far as I acn tell, in that I do seem to be eligible for that size tax credit as a first time home buyer. So anyway, assuming that I'm willing to play it frugal and pay back to myself what's in my tax account, there's $9,000 to start - or $11,000 next month. Meanwhile, I've got an additional $12,000 in a brokerage account. I'll take a penalty of about 2% or 3% if I pull it out before April. All of which is to say, I can put together about $20,000 on my own. A good chunk of change.
On the other hand, getting a house is very expensive.
1. 20% down. I did a bunch of math, and I'm looking at houses up to about $175,000. Ostensibly, I'm looking up to about $200,000, but I decided that really that was a little outside what I can manage. At $175k, I'd have to put $35,000 down. On the low end, the cheapest places that meet my minimum requirements are about $130,000 - or $26,000 down.
2. Closing fees. Closing fees end up being equal to between 3% and 5% of the total amount of your loan. However, the main bank I'm talking to is Chase, and since I'm an existing Chase customer (I've got checking, savings, and brokerage accounts and a credit card, been with them for 2 full years and have been a pretty good customer all the way around), and because of that they're willing to take as much as 2% off of that closing fee.
Low end: $130,000, minus the $26,000 down payment = $104,000 loan, $7,000 in closing fees. (6.7%). With Chase, it'll only be about $4,000 in closing fees.
High end: $175,000, minus the $35,000 down payment = $140,000 loan, $9,000 in closing fees. (6.3%). With Chase, it'll only be about $5,600.
These numbers are approximate - the calculator I'm using for reference is including points, but the loan that Chase offered me has a pretty good rate without points, and not having any will lower the cost. Still, I'd rather over estimate than under estimate.
3. Application fees and other random expenses. While I suspect there will be more than one of these, I know for certain that Chase is gonna charge me $395 to apply for the loan, up front. Someone will probably charge me to run my credit at some point, so call that another $100. Also, apparently for the contract part I'll have to hire an attorney, so there's another, say, $500. Again, to over estimate, let's ball park "random incidental expenses" at $1500.
All together, then, I'll need $31,500 up front on the low end, and $42,600 up front on the high end. Clearly, on the math end of things, I've got a problem. However, I've got a possible way around this problem (okay, an almost guaranteed way around this problem) in that my grandfather will probably be willing to lend me the difference. But I haven't had the nerve to speak to him about it yet, so I can't really make any decisions until I know...what I do know is that before I sat down and did all of this math, I had still tentatively entertained the notion that I might be able to look at places up to about $250,000, but that's clearly not the case.
After I sat down and crunched the numbers, I started to feel kinda stressed. By no measure do I really have enough money to do this while putting 20% down. However, I decided to keep going, with my upper (and past upper) limits clearly in mind. The next step was to narrow down where I was looking.
New York City is big and has all kinds of neighborhoods. I had to try to figure out which one was for me.
1. A safe neighborhood. This should be obvious. But, of course, this is a trade off - not safe neighborhoods are less expensive.
2. A neighborhood that is in some way convenient to the things I have to do and places that I have to go. I'm priced out of Manhattan from the beginning of this process. Moving out from there, I can look in the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn. The parts of Brooklyn that are in my price range are in no way convenient to any place where I need to go, which eliminates that. Of the three boroughs, the Bronx is definitely the best for me, in that I do the most work there. However, the down side of that is that a lot of the neighborhoods in the Bronx don't meet the first criteria. Like, at all, and the ones that do tend to be outside of my price range.
3. An apartment that includes a parking spot (with or without an additional fee associated with it). If I can't get a cheap or included parking spot for the car, mom might have to give it up, and neither of us wants that. The alternative would be to move the car to someplace cheaper but not near me, but I've learned in the past 6 months since I moved away from where the car is parked that when it's inconvenient for me to get to the car, I just don't drive anywhere cause it's a pain in the butt. And a non-attached parking lot will be more expensive, in that it won't be offering an "insiders price." So, ideally, I'd have one in my building. The other choice, of course, is to get a house with a drive way, but when I reduced my price to below $200,000, houses pretty much universally are too much for my budget.
4. Must allow dogs, of course. Just being a pet friendly building inexplicably appears to add about $10k to the price of the apartments.
5. An accessible location. The problem with this is that most neighborhoods that are accessible (read: near city trains) are either terrible neighborhoods or are expensive. Indeed, much to my chagrin, in my price range I've found that I'm effectively priced out of any neighborhood closer to a train than about a mile. Where does this leave? Places like Flatbush in Brooklyn, Jamaica in Queens, and Riverdale in the Bronx. Flatbush is too far from every where I need to go, Jamaica is an enclave that's inconvenient for most places I need to go and doesn't get me access to trains that get me any place I need to go, and the parts of Riverdale I can afford are far away both from trains and the parts of the Bronx where I actually work. Of course, by definition, the parts of the Bronx where I work are some of the worst neighborhoods in NYC - that's why I work in them! I also looked at some other neighborhoods in the Bronx, and depending on where all my musings leave me, I will be looking at a few of those. However, when I weighed all the pieces, I decided that I could manage with Riverdale.
Riverdale is:
1. Close to the 1 train. Close-ish, anyway.
2. Has a lot of buses that go into NYC and into other parts of the Bronx, including parts where I need to go.
3. Is safe.
4. Is in my price range.
5. Tends to have parking, because it's high end.
6. Has easy access to the Henry Hudson Parkway, which goes lots of useful places.
7. Has Metronorth, which is pricey but will be useful once mom gets a country place (probably, anyway).
8. Is close to a very large and nice park.
It's not the perfect solution, but it's the first one I'm pursuing.
In truth, in before I started pursuing which areas would make sense, early indications were that Riverdale was actually one of my only options, which seems highly contradictory to me cause in my head Riverdale is expensive, but it turned out to be the very first area I found when first searching that met the criteria of being safe, looking nice, allowing the dog, and having parking.
Thus, over the weekend, I got in contact with Linda the Real Estate Agent and made an appointment to get shown apartments in two different complexes.
The first set of apartments are located at Sky View on the Hudson. This enclave community is situated on the top of a steep hill, and the higher apartments have pretty awesome views. The complex has a pool and a health club included in the maintenance fee, and both are really nice. There's also a dog park, a kiddie pool, a play ground, tennis courts and basketball courts, also included. There's parking on site - indoor is $150 per month extra, and outdoor is $110 per month. Property taxes are also included in the Maintenance fee, as are heat and hot water. The grounds over all or nice, and, standing around, I saw lots of families and a few older people, and there was a nice atmosphere over all - people seemed friendly, and a lots of people said hi or exchanged words with Linda. It was just off of Riverdale Ave., which is a major thoroughfare, and there was a grocery store, a couple restaurants, a Subway, and some other random stuff really close. On the flip side, it's a mile and a half to the 1 Train, and a little preliminary investigation of travel times ain't pretty.
From Skyview to one E. Tremont in Throgs Neck, where I go to meetings sometimes - 90 minutes (about how long it takes me now).
...to the Met: 60 minutes. (I can do it in 45 min)
...to St. Johns University, one of the least convenient places I typically have to go: 2 hours. (this is an annoyingly long trip now, but doesn't take quite that long)
...to Citifield: 105 minutes. (about 20 minutes longer than it takes me now)
...to the New York Aquarium, another of the least convenient places I sometimes have to go: 2 hours.
Really, looking at various routes...it'll take as long to get places from there as from where I live now. So much for convenience.
Anyway...
I spent a bunch of time looking at the available apartments online, and it turns out that a lot of them aren't actually available, but I looked at three different floor plans, and there are a few more apartments available in each of those floor plans in one of the three buildings on site. Typically speaking, the smaller the apartment the cheaper, and the lower floor the apartment is on, also the cheaper.
The "N" Floor Plan (which is the same as the "P" Floor Plan):
I looked at Apartment 3N. This is a small studio; the one I saw was newly renovated with a shiny new kitchen and bathroom and a floor that had just been varnished, preventing me from going and looking out the window. There are a bunch of photos at the link, and to those I add:
Kitchen
The Only Room
The Dressing Area (which is to say, an oversized closet with some area to towel off)
The Bathroom
Not all the units will look this nice because they're not all renovated, and that tells in the price to some extent. 3N is going for $139,000, and the studios this size seems to mostly be in that price range whether they've been fixed up or not.
Studios are small. There's no real getting around that. And though I truly don't mind living someplace small, well, once I've bought it, it's mine, and it might not be so bad to end up someplace larger. It's nice to see how well the apartments fix up, though, because the other two apartments that I saw were not as spruced up.
The "O" Floor Plan:
I took a look at Aparmtnet 3O, which is right next door to 3N. This apartment was going to need some work - especially a paint job. Like the first apartment it had an entrance area supposedly called a Dining Foyer which is one of the most useless spaces I've seen in a building - it's not big enough for anything, so just basically eats up some of the small amount of square footage that these apartments have. No photos at the link, but here are the ones I took:
The Alcove:
Half the Main Studio Area and the "Dining Alcove":
That's Some View:
The Kitchen
I can't say I was much impressed with this apartment - or even this floor plan. It was just dog dull, really. And the kitchen was small and pokey and not at all what I'd hope for.
The "R" Floor Plan
Okay, I'll just start by saying it outright: This is the one I really liked. :) Apartment 8R. The "R" floor plan is one of their "higher end" floor plans, and includes a terrace. The apartment has a bigger kitchen than the other options, and some interesting spaces.
The View Towards Manhattan (you could see the bridge and even the Empire State Building)
The View Towards New Jersey
Sleeping Alcove
Dressing Area/Closet
Bathroom
Dining Area, The Front Door
Kitchen
I apparently didn't take a picture of the main living area. That was dumb of me. This apartment needs some updating, especially in the appliances, but over all, I have to say, I really liked it. And that's problematic, because it's also one of the more expensive units that I saw, and I'd have to put some money into it. I haven't really figured out how I feel about this yet.
I was quoted a price of $179,000 for this apartment, though the website says $189,000. If I assume my above "maximum" of $175,000, then I'd need that $42,500 to get the apartment. The monthly payments vary, but basically what I'd be looking at financially if I actually went for something like this would be:
Mortgage (15 year) - $1100
OR
Mortgage (30 year) - $900
(both of these would actually be a little lower, because they offered me a slightly better interest rate - but of course, it's not possible to know what exactly the rate will be when I finalize a loan...)
Maintenance: $640
Car: $110
Cable and Internet: about $150
Electric: I'm guessing about $50
Total: $1850 or $2050 - either of which I can manage - more than I pay now, but less than I managed on 72nd St.
Pros:
Nice building
Nice people
Nice facilities and amenities
Lots of closet space
Cons:
Location
Price - but really, any price is a con at this point
I'm not going to go as in depth into the other building, because, well, I didn't like it as much. The Windsors has a lot of the same amenities as the other complex, and is a bit closer to the city. The Maintenance fees are kind of high, and they include taxes, electric, heat and hot water. The pool and health club cost extra (though it's annual and it's not that much) and the parking is $150 per month. It's right in front of the Henry Hudson Parkway, though, which makes driving easy, and there's a pretty useful bus that stops just outside the building. The atmosphere wasn't great - I didn't see that many people around, and they didn't seem as friendly, and the public areas of seemed more pokey. However, the flip side of that is that I saw the cheapest apartment of the day there.
Unit 3N (same number as above, but that's just a coincedence.
This was a teeny tiny studio, but it was only $125K plus the maintenance fee. And it would need some work.
The View
Kitchen
The Difficult to Photograph Very Small Living Area
Bathroom
As the view shows, it's a pretty nice spot, and the apartment had a terrace.
Unit 4G
This is the only 1 bedroom I found. It was $175,000, plus a maintenance fee of $641.
View
Another Bad Photograph of the Living Area - I really did a bad job on photographing the living room type spaces in all of these apartments... :)
Bedroom
Bathroom
Kitchen
This apartment had a huge terrace, and I think I should have liked it better than I did. Maybe I was just getting tired. I'm getting tired from writing this post, too. ;)
When I got home from all of that, I did a little more poking around online. I checked a couple neighborhoods I hadn't yet, and confirmed that I don't, in fact, have a prayer of affording an actual house. Then, I messed around a bit on Ikea's web page, and firmly established that cosmetic remodeling doesn't cost terribly much at all, but appliances are expensive. :)
To sum up everything, I didn't like the second complex as much as the first. I saw some stuff in the first complex that I really liked, but it's tough to force myself to realize that the one that I saw that I really liked is at the outside limit of my price limit - and it's only even in that range if I can borrow money from my grandfather.
All in all, I hoped that writing all this would de-stress me, but instead, I feel a bit overwhelmed...Sigh...
The money part is complicated. To put it short, I'm not really prepared, financially, for this yet. I've got a pile of money in my savings account, but ultimately that money needs to go to the IRS, or I'll be in serious trouble. The flip side of that is that buying a house now will save me a large amount on my taxes - $8,000, as far as I acn tell, in that I do seem to be eligible for that size tax credit as a first time home buyer. So anyway, assuming that I'm willing to play it frugal and pay back to myself what's in my tax account, there's $9,000 to start - or $11,000 next month. Meanwhile, I've got an additional $12,000 in a brokerage account. I'll take a penalty of about 2% or 3% if I pull it out before April. All of which is to say, I can put together about $20,000 on my own. A good chunk of change.
On the other hand, getting a house is very expensive.
1. 20% down. I did a bunch of math, and I'm looking at houses up to about $175,000. Ostensibly, I'm looking up to about $200,000, but I decided that really that was a little outside what I can manage. At $175k, I'd have to put $35,000 down. On the low end, the cheapest places that meet my minimum requirements are about $130,000 - or $26,000 down.
2. Closing fees. Closing fees end up being equal to between 3% and 5% of the total amount of your loan. However, the main bank I'm talking to is Chase, and since I'm an existing Chase customer (I've got checking, savings, and brokerage accounts and a credit card, been with them for 2 full years and have been a pretty good customer all the way around), and because of that they're willing to take as much as 2% off of that closing fee.
Low end: $130,000, minus the $26,000 down payment = $104,000 loan, $7,000 in closing fees. (6.7%). With Chase, it'll only be about $4,000 in closing fees.
High end: $175,000, minus the $35,000 down payment = $140,000 loan, $9,000 in closing fees. (6.3%). With Chase, it'll only be about $5,600.
These numbers are approximate - the calculator I'm using for reference is including points, but the loan that Chase offered me has a pretty good rate without points, and not having any will lower the cost. Still, I'd rather over estimate than under estimate.
3. Application fees and other random expenses. While I suspect there will be more than one of these, I know for certain that Chase is gonna charge me $395 to apply for the loan, up front. Someone will probably charge me to run my credit at some point, so call that another $100. Also, apparently for the contract part I'll have to hire an attorney, so there's another, say, $500. Again, to over estimate, let's ball park "random incidental expenses" at $1500.
All together, then, I'll need $31,500 up front on the low end, and $42,600 up front on the high end. Clearly, on the math end of things, I've got a problem. However, I've got a possible way around this problem (okay, an almost guaranteed way around this problem) in that my grandfather will probably be willing to lend me the difference. But I haven't had the nerve to speak to him about it yet, so I can't really make any decisions until I know...what I do know is that before I sat down and did all of this math, I had still tentatively entertained the notion that I might be able to look at places up to about $250,000, but that's clearly not the case.
After I sat down and crunched the numbers, I started to feel kinda stressed. By no measure do I really have enough money to do this while putting 20% down. However, I decided to keep going, with my upper (and past upper) limits clearly in mind. The next step was to narrow down where I was looking.
New York City is big and has all kinds of neighborhoods. I had to try to figure out which one was for me.
1. A safe neighborhood. This should be obvious. But, of course, this is a trade off - not safe neighborhoods are less expensive.
2. A neighborhood that is in some way convenient to the things I have to do and places that I have to go. I'm priced out of Manhattan from the beginning of this process. Moving out from there, I can look in the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn. The parts of Brooklyn that are in my price range are in no way convenient to any place where I need to go, which eliminates that. Of the three boroughs, the Bronx is definitely the best for me, in that I do the most work there. However, the down side of that is that a lot of the neighborhoods in the Bronx don't meet the first criteria. Like, at all, and the ones that do tend to be outside of my price range.
3. An apartment that includes a parking spot (with or without an additional fee associated with it). If I can't get a cheap or included parking spot for the car, mom might have to give it up, and neither of us wants that. The alternative would be to move the car to someplace cheaper but not near me, but I've learned in the past 6 months since I moved away from where the car is parked that when it's inconvenient for me to get to the car, I just don't drive anywhere cause it's a pain in the butt. And a non-attached parking lot will be more expensive, in that it won't be offering an "insiders price." So, ideally, I'd have one in my building. The other choice, of course, is to get a house with a drive way, but when I reduced my price to below $200,000, houses pretty much universally are too much for my budget.
4. Must allow dogs, of course. Just being a pet friendly building inexplicably appears to add about $10k to the price of the apartments.
5. An accessible location. The problem with this is that most neighborhoods that are accessible (read: near city trains) are either terrible neighborhoods or are expensive. Indeed, much to my chagrin, in my price range I've found that I'm effectively priced out of any neighborhood closer to a train than about a mile. Where does this leave? Places like Flatbush in Brooklyn, Jamaica in Queens, and Riverdale in the Bronx. Flatbush is too far from every where I need to go, Jamaica is an enclave that's inconvenient for most places I need to go and doesn't get me access to trains that get me any place I need to go, and the parts of Riverdale I can afford are far away both from trains and the parts of the Bronx where I actually work. Of course, by definition, the parts of the Bronx where I work are some of the worst neighborhoods in NYC - that's why I work in them! I also looked at some other neighborhoods in the Bronx, and depending on where all my musings leave me, I will be looking at a few of those. However, when I weighed all the pieces, I decided that I could manage with Riverdale.
Riverdale is:
1. Close to the 1 train. Close-ish, anyway.
2. Has a lot of buses that go into NYC and into other parts of the Bronx, including parts where I need to go.
3. Is safe.
4. Is in my price range.
5. Tends to have parking, because it's high end.
6. Has easy access to the Henry Hudson Parkway, which goes lots of useful places.
7. Has Metronorth, which is pricey but will be useful once mom gets a country place (probably, anyway).
8. Is close to a very large and nice park.
It's not the perfect solution, but it's the first one I'm pursuing.
In truth, in before I started pursuing which areas would make sense, early indications were that Riverdale was actually one of my only options, which seems highly contradictory to me cause in my head Riverdale is expensive, but it turned out to be the very first area I found when first searching that met the criteria of being safe, looking nice, allowing the dog, and having parking.
Thus, over the weekend, I got in contact with Linda the Real Estate Agent and made an appointment to get shown apartments in two different complexes.
The first set of apartments are located at Sky View on the Hudson. This enclave community is situated on the top of a steep hill, and the higher apartments have pretty awesome views. The complex has a pool and a health club included in the maintenance fee, and both are really nice. There's also a dog park, a kiddie pool, a play ground, tennis courts and basketball courts, also included. There's parking on site - indoor is $150 per month extra, and outdoor is $110 per month. Property taxes are also included in the Maintenance fee, as are heat and hot water. The grounds over all or nice, and, standing around, I saw lots of families and a few older people, and there was a nice atmosphere over all - people seemed friendly, and a lots of people said hi or exchanged words with Linda. It was just off of Riverdale Ave., which is a major thoroughfare, and there was a grocery store, a couple restaurants, a Subway, and some other random stuff really close. On the flip side, it's a mile and a half to the 1 Train, and a little preliminary investigation of travel times ain't pretty.
From Skyview to one E. Tremont in Throgs Neck, where I go to meetings sometimes - 90 minutes (about how long it takes me now).
...to the Met: 60 minutes. (I can do it in 45 min)
...to St. Johns University, one of the least convenient places I typically have to go: 2 hours. (this is an annoyingly long trip now, but doesn't take quite that long)
...to Citifield: 105 minutes. (about 20 minutes longer than it takes me now)
...to the New York Aquarium, another of the least convenient places I sometimes have to go: 2 hours.
Really, looking at various routes...it'll take as long to get places from there as from where I live now. So much for convenience.
Anyway...
I spent a bunch of time looking at the available apartments online, and it turns out that a lot of them aren't actually available, but I looked at three different floor plans, and there are a few more apartments available in each of those floor plans in one of the three buildings on site. Typically speaking, the smaller the apartment the cheaper, and the lower floor the apartment is on, also the cheaper.
The "N" Floor Plan (which is the same as the "P" Floor Plan):
I looked at Apartment 3N. This is a small studio; the one I saw was newly renovated with a shiny new kitchen and bathroom and a floor that had just been varnished, preventing me from going and looking out the window. There are a bunch of photos at the link, and to those I add:
Kitchen
The Only Room
The Dressing Area (which is to say, an oversized closet with some area to towel off)
The Bathroom
Not all the units will look this nice because they're not all renovated, and that tells in the price to some extent. 3N is going for $139,000, and the studios this size seems to mostly be in that price range whether they've been fixed up or not.
Studios are small. There's no real getting around that. And though I truly don't mind living someplace small, well, once I've bought it, it's mine, and it might not be so bad to end up someplace larger. It's nice to see how well the apartments fix up, though, because the other two apartments that I saw were not as spruced up.
The "O" Floor Plan:
I took a look at Aparmtnet 3O, which is right next door to 3N. This apartment was going to need some work - especially a paint job. Like the first apartment it had an entrance area supposedly called a Dining Foyer which is one of the most useless spaces I've seen in a building - it's not big enough for anything, so just basically eats up some of the small amount of square footage that these apartments have. No photos at the link, but here are the ones I took:
The Alcove:
Half the Main Studio Area and the "Dining Alcove":
That's Some View:
The Kitchen
I can't say I was much impressed with this apartment - or even this floor plan. It was just dog dull, really. And the kitchen was small and pokey and not at all what I'd hope for.
The "R" Floor Plan
Okay, I'll just start by saying it outright: This is the one I really liked. :) Apartment 8R. The "R" floor plan is one of their "higher end" floor plans, and includes a terrace. The apartment has a bigger kitchen than the other options, and some interesting spaces.
The View Towards Manhattan (you could see the bridge and even the Empire State Building)
The View Towards New Jersey
Sleeping Alcove
Dressing Area/Closet
Bathroom
Dining Area, The Front Door
Kitchen
I apparently didn't take a picture of the main living area. That was dumb of me. This apartment needs some updating, especially in the appliances, but over all, I have to say, I really liked it. And that's problematic, because it's also one of the more expensive units that I saw, and I'd have to put some money into it. I haven't really figured out how I feel about this yet.
I was quoted a price of $179,000 for this apartment, though the website says $189,000. If I assume my above "maximum" of $175,000, then I'd need that $42,500 to get the apartment. The monthly payments vary, but basically what I'd be looking at financially if I actually went for something like this would be:
Mortgage (15 year) - $1100
OR
Mortgage (30 year) - $900
(both of these would actually be a little lower, because they offered me a slightly better interest rate - but of course, it's not possible to know what exactly the rate will be when I finalize a loan...)
Maintenance: $640
Car: $110
Cable and Internet: about $150
Electric: I'm guessing about $50
Total: $1850 or $2050 - either of which I can manage - more than I pay now, but less than I managed on 72nd St.
Pros:
Nice building
Nice people
Nice facilities and amenities
Lots of closet space
Cons:
Location
Price - but really, any price is a con at this point
I'm not going to go as in depth into the other building, because, well, I didn't like it as much. The Windsors has a lot of the same amenities as the other complex, and is a bit closer to the city. The Maintenance fees are kind of high, and they include taxes, electric, heat and hot water. The pool and health club cost extra (though it's annual and it's not that much) and the parking is $150 per month. It's right in front of the Henry Hudson Parkway, though, which makes driving easy, and there's a pretty useful bus that stops just outside the building. The atmosphere wasn't great - I didn't see that many people around, and they didn't seem as friendly, and the public areas of seemed more pokey. However, the flip side of that is that I saw the cheapest apartment of the day there.
Unit 3N (same number as above, but that's just a coincedence.
This was a teeny tiny studio, but it was only $125K plus the maintenance fee. And it would need some work.
The View
Kitchen
The Difficult to Photograph Very Small Living Area
Bathroom
As the view shows, it's a pretty nice spot, and the apartment had a terrace.
Unit 4G
This is the only 1 bedroom I found. It was $175,000, plus a maintenance fee of $641.
View
Another Bad Photograph of the Living Area - I really did a bad job on photographing the living room type spaces in all of these apartments... :)
Bedroom
Bathroom
Kitchen
This apartment had a huge terrace, and I think I should have liked it better than I did. Maybe I was just getting tired. I'm getting tired from writing this post, too. ;)
When I got home from all of that, I did a little more poking around online. I checked a couple neighborhoods I hadn't yet, and confirmed that I don't, in fact, have a prayer of affording an actual house. Then, I messed around a bit on Ikea's web page, and firmly established that cosmetic remodeling doesn't cost terribly much at all, but appliances are expensive. :)
To sum up everything, I didn't like the second complex as much as the first. I saw some stuff in the first complex that I really liked, but it's tough to force myself to realize that the one that I saw that I really liked is at the outside limit of my price limit - and it's only even in that range if I can borrow money from my grandfather.
All in all, I hoped that writing all this would de-stress me, but instead, I feel a bit overwhelmed...Sigh...
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Date: 2009-07-09 06:30 pm (UTC)But, I really like that R floor plan and it seems to have a nice view...though I've never been to New York before, so to me, that's a nice view of the area. :p
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Date: 2009-07-10 12:01 am (UTC)It's a pretty nice view...I'm not quite sure how to put in to perspective, cause it's not an angle from which folks usually photograph NYC...it'll be gorgeous at night, too - the bridge that's in the distance in that shot will be all lit up. :)
You should visit NY some time, there's a lot of neat stuff here. ;)
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Date: 2009-07-10 12:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-10 01:25 am (UTC)And me go to New York? *shudder* I get dizzy just looking at the buildings in LA and there are only a few tall ones grouped together...they're not even half the size of those in NY. *shudder* But, I might one day, my fiance's best friend (Best Man too lol) lives in New Jersey but works in NY, so I just might.
And thank you! We can use all the luck. :p
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Date: 2009-07-10 12:40 pm (UTC)