Sublet Life In NYC
Posted on November 8, 2019“Sublet (noun): property and especially housing obtained by or available through a sublease” [1]
When I started searching for a place to live during my fall semester in NYC, it was clear from the beginning that it wouldn’t be easy. I was lucky to quickly find a subletter for my apartment back home for the whole period. He was the second person who saw the apartment and half an hour after he visited, he was accepted.
But here in New York, the situation turned out to be different. A New Yorker friend assured me before I started my search, “Don’t worry! Everyone finds an apartment in New York, even if it’s not easy. You will not stay homeless.” Even though this friend had lived in the same apartment for many years, it seemed like she was right. At least, I felt less nervous after hearing this.
However, New York sublets turned out to be a complex system that drained my time – my precious stock, and my budget – my second stock [2]. I decided on a low budget, which I thought would get me a reasonable apartment in several areas with up to 3 roommates and around 30 minutes from school. NYC is huge and has so many options, right? My budget turned out to be too low compared to the reality.
Before moving here, I was trying to see apartments through video chat but decided that it was too complicated, especially since I hadn’t been in NYC before. Contracts here are different from my country and it was too hard to pay a large amount of money to people I met virtually. Luckily, I found a more reliable solution through a closed Facebook group exclusively for women from my country who lived in NYC. I was accepted to the group. Those wonderful women self-organized and created maps with spots in the city for every need (finding sublets, good food, hairdressers, tips about the American culture, recommendations, etc.). Furthermore, it was much easier to transfer money to someone from your own country, since you had some mutual friends.
I found my first sublet through the group, but it was only for two weeks. Since then I have moved between 9 different sublets for various periods, from one day to a full month. My ‘google map’ has 9 flags with the dates as names for each place. On the bright side, I got to know many parts of the city in a short time (3 months).
Through my time here I learned the ‘sublet’ pattern and was studying the self-organization in the sublet system – “Only when the pattern was detected did people begin to think about studying self-organization systems on their own metrics” [3].
I learned about the sublet system through disappointments and experience in my search. Money played a big role twice: as the budget’s frame for my searching, and also as a deal-breaker when I didn’t understand the trusting policy between people.
[4]
As an example, I lost one of the best sublets along the way, because I didn’t know exactly how to transfer the money in the best way without extra fees, which caused the owner to lose trust in me, a truly important component. In the fast-paced NYC sublet system, you need to create trust with anonymous people in a very short time.
Airbnb, which is supposed to be the most reliable platform for this situation, seems to be more expensive – cleaning fees and taxes were required and there was no option to see apartments or roommates before booking the place. I learned that it’s better to find a place from the beginning of each month, otherwise it’s a big crazy puzzle, all over the city. I learned to not pay before you see a place, to choose roommates carefully, and much more.
During this process, limited stock of my time had to also support my studies, social life, and personal life. Delays in finding a lasting sublet worsened a negative feedback loop on my nervous system and emotional state between the searches, which influenced my social and personal life and my studies too. It was balanced by a positive feedback loop that ‘feed’ my curiosity about New York [5]. It created a positive outcome of it – I learned about searching, trust, efficiency and having unique experiences.
Now I can say that most of the time I felt there is a balance. I played with the money so sometimes I had a more expensive place to stay and sometimes a cheaper one. I can say that I have got the true New Yorker experience now…
- Noga B. Sources:
[1] 'Sublet', Merriam Webster Dicitionary [2] Thinking in systems: a primer, by Donella Meadows, 2009 [3] Emergence:the connected lives of ants, brains, cities, and software, by Steven Johnson, 2001, pg. 18 [4] The Creative Balance of Time, Money, and Motivation, by Webb Pickersgill, 2018 [5] Thinking in systems: a primer, by Donella Meadows, 2009