Adventure in New York: Looking for Apartment

I've been helping Yalu, Celia, and Helen find a place in NYC. We went down to NYC by Chinatown bus Friday early afternoon and we literally hit the road running. We had appointments for all of Saturday but one of the brokers called and said he wanted to meet us Friday night. So we got to New York and went around to a few places. It was pretty tiring to run around that late.

This first broker we saw was not that great. They're a big real estate company that doesn't really care about taking our time to do search and bringing us to places that's out of our price range. I had found three places on their website but we didn't bring a copy of the spreadsheet that had all our research on it. So they took their time looking for places for us. They weren't very happy that we had other brokers in mind. I mean, seriously, you can't possibly go through only one broker and try to find cheap places. I think going through only one person is for people who are more flexible in their price range.

Saturday was one big adventure. Saturday morning, Celia and I met up with the first of our 3 appointments. This guy was unfriendly and not helpful. The place he took us to actually didn't have what we were looking for. And the place is like a hotel. The three bedrooms were already rented out earlier that week. This broker didn't check. We didn't like the broker or the manager there. So, we chilled for a while and met up with another broker who was much better. He showed us places in our price range and was really helpful.

Anyway, long story short, Saturday was a whole day of running around and then chilling at MacDonald's to chat about things. I'm not going to write anymore about the current situation since it's still all up in the air. Here's the important part though: I learned what I need to bring if I were to look for an apartment:

- A copy of any research done
- A camera and its charger
- A cellphone and its charger
- A checkbook
- ATM card (to withdraw deposit money with)
- Proof of employment (offer letter or pay stub)
- Notebook and pen

All very important stuff for apartment hunting, some of which we didn't have with us. Anyway, I hope it all works out.