A Renter's Guide to Manhattan
Aww... It's the class of 2008! All growed up and coming to NYC for that awesome career and super apartment like in Friends or Sex and the City? Sorry, little camper, we don't serve your kind! "The thousands of new graduates who will be driving the engine of the city's rental market from now until September will quickly learn that renting in New York is not like renting anywhere else. The second shock is likely to be how small a Manhattan apartment can be. It is not uncommon in New York, for example, to shop for a junior one-bedroom or a convertible one-bedroom, neither of which is a true one-bedroom at all but really a studio that already has or can have a wall put up to create a bedroom."
"Aside from the realities of price and space, the requirements set by New York landlords are also bound to help turn a bright-eyed first-time renter's outlook grim. To start with, landlords want only tenants who earn at least 40 times the monthly rent, which means an $80,000 annual salary for a $2,000 apartment. According to census data, more than 25,000 graduates ages 22 to 28 moved to the city in 2006, and their median salary was about $35,600." [NYT]
But there's plenty of space in Brooklyn-go there! There's nothing in Queens. Especially not in Forest Hills.