How We Chose Our New York City Neighborhood

I’ve lived in New York for 18 months now and the time has flown by. Our lease on our apartment in our West Harlem neighborhood is about to be up and we’re figuring out our next move, which makes me think back to when we were deciding where to live in the first place.

Moving to New York City is daunting. Especially if you’re coming in without a neighborhood in mind or any real knowledge of the city like we were, it can feel like you might as well throw a dart at a one of those big subway maps and call it your new home.

Asking around for recommendations was no help. Everyone I asked for advice on where to live basically said, ‘well, you can live anywhere!’ Um, duh. Although I have to admit this is probably what I’d say now to someone who asked the same thing.

I think what they mean is, you can find great things and not-so-great things about any NYC neighborhood. Each one has its own ups and downs and quirks, and a feature that will make a neighborhood appealing to one person will be a turn-off to another.

The most helpful resource I found on choosing a NYC neighborhood was actually Reddit. I posted a question in r/AskNYC with a list of things we were looking for and users wrote back with uber-specific recommendations for where to look. While it was advice from strangers, it at least gave us a solid list to start from.

Ultimately, we ended up in West Harlem in a neighborhood known as Hamilton Heights, which has been a great first NYC home.

If you’re moving to New York City and trying to figure out where to live, maybe my account of how we decided will help you out.

Manhattan Or Beyond

The first thing you have to decide when you’re moving here is whether you’ll live on the actual island of Manhattan or somewhere around it. New York City is made up of five boroughs, all of which you’ve probably heard of—Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, The Bronx and Staten Island.

In addition to the five boroughs, there’s also New Jersey, Long Island and Westchester County, all of which are doable for commuting into the city (at least by New York standards).

Living in Manhattan will put you “in the middle of the action,” so to speak, with more convenient proximity to most company offices and events. Of course, it’s generally more expensive (though not always!) than elsewhere, and you’ll get less space for your buck.

Living in one of the outer boroughs or the other locations I mentioned will generally mean you can get more space for your money and may have more of a traditional “neighborhood” feel than living among high rises. But, you’ll also trade more of your time commuting by train, bus, ferry, foot, or some combination of all of them.

For me, having our first apartment be in Manhattan was something I really wanted. Since I work from home and wouldn’t have a reason to go into the city daily for work, I felt like it would be twice as hard for me to learn the lay of the land if we lived in one of the outer boroughs. Plus, neither John or I plan on staying here forever; I figured if we’re going to live in New York, we should at least experience living in Manhattan!

Now that we’ve been here for a bit, I’d definitely be happy moving a little further away from the hustle and bustle. However I’m glad we picked somewhere in Manhattan for our first place.

The Numbers

There are three big numbers you’ll need to know when you begin your NYC apartment search: how high you’re willing to go on rent, how low you’re willing to go on square footage, and how much cash you have on hand to get in the door.

The first two numbers are pretty straightforward; are your square footage goes up, so does what you’ll pay in rent. But the third one might come as a surprise.

Apartment hunting in New York City is like shopping for a house anywhere else. Many buildings will require you to go through a broker (basically like a real estate agent for renters) to even see the apartments inside. And of course, brokers cost money.

Many rental companies will also require exorbitant sums to secure an apartment—two to three months’ rent, in some cases. My jaw dropped when I learned we could easily spend what we’d paid for the down payment on our first house just getting into a decent apartment.

But don’t despair: there are other options. There are what’s called no-fee apartments, which you can see and rent without a broker. There are also some listings that require the owner to pay the broker’s fee rather than the renter, which is the scenario we ended up going with.

The website StreetEasy will be your new best friend to narrow down available apartments that meet your criteria.

Since we were coming from out of state and needed a place fast, we used the broker service TripleMint to scope out and set up a bunch of listings for John to see all in a row one evening (I was still in Florida wrapping things up with the sale of our house). This worked out pretty well, and we ended up moving into one of the places they showed him that night. Since it was an OP listing, or ‘owner pays,’ the rental company paid the broker’s fee instead of us. Still expensive, but not nearly as bad as it could have been.

The Neighborhood

The apartment we settled on was a pet-friendly two bedroom in the West 150’s. This is what most people consider way uptown, although the island of Manhattan goes all the way up to 220^th Street in the northernmost neighborhood of Inwood (for reference, Central Park runs from 59^th Street to 110^th).

We chose to live so far uptown for a number of reasons. The first and foremost was the amount of space we could get for our money. Aside from the two of us, we have an active 60-pound dog and two cats. A studio was out of the question, and a one bedroom would have been a tight squeeze. We would’ve been hard-pressed to find a two-bedroom within our budget further south.

Another reason is that the neighborhood is ideal for having a dog. Our apartment is a block from the Hudson River, and there’s a long park that runs along the river all the way down the island, which makes exercising Bo pretty painless.

Finally, we liked the fact that it’s a little quieter up here than the busier neighborhoods of midtown and downtown. We don’t have as many options for shopping and dining, but there’s less traffic, crowds and noise up here. We sold our cars before we moved up, but many of our neighbors have cars and are able to park them on the street. John takes the subway to work in midtown every morning, which is about a 25-minute ride.

The main drawback of our neighborhood is that by Manhattan standards, it’s far to get to (think a 30-minute subway ride to meet up with friends or go see a show). If being close to lots of nightlife and the trendier Manhattan hotspots is important to you, you might be happier in a more “happening” neighborhood, like Soho or the Lower East Side.

Other Options We Considered

When we were searching for an apartment, I found it helpful to read about the specific reasons people liked certain neighborhoods. I haven’t lived here long enough to give an insider’s scoops on all of the different parts of the city, but here are some of the other neighborhoods we looked at and liked.

Upper West Side

I did and still do love this part of town. Not only is it beautiful and clean, it’s home to many of the shooting locations for my favorite movie of all time, You’ve Got Mail (a totally legit reason to choose to live somewhere).

Some people say the Upper West Side is stuffy and boring, but as a 30-year-old who’s rarely out past midnight, I’m all about it. There are tons of cute restaurants and the kinds of bars that instantly feel familiar, and it’s right on the border of Central Park.

Astoria, Queens

While I was pretty sold on living in Manhattan, Astoria, Queens came highly recommended and was among the options we strongly considered. If we had opted not to live in Manhattan, this is where we probably would have landed.

This historically Greek part of Queens is an easy subway ride into midtown, full of diversity, and everything you could want or need—grocery stores, dining, nightlife, culture—is easily walkable. It also seems like it could be a good place to raise a family, which I wouldn’t say about other neighborhoods.

Morningside Heights

Another uptown neighborhood, best known as the home of Columbia University. We walked through the parks near campus on a fall morning when we made a trip up to the city to scope out potential neighborhoods, and I was charmed to death.

Morningside Heights is cute and safe, but it seemed like a lot of the apartments were overpriced for the location. I’m sure the college has a lot to do with that.

As a friend said to us when we announced we were moving here, there are no bad neighborhoods in New York City. For the most part, it’s true, so don’t go crazy over-analyzing which one is the “best” spot for you. My best advice is to pick a place that feels livable and doesn’t cost your life savings to get into, knowing you can always relocate in a year when you know the city a little better.

And by all means: do not rent somewhere beyond your means. Living here—groceries, getting around, having some semblance of a social life—is expensive enough without the stress of a rent bill you can’t really afford. Size down, move a little further out, or live with roommates to accommodate your budget. When you get your first $30 bar tab for two vodka sodas, you’ll be glad you did!

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