A NYC Apartment Journey, Part 2: A Luxury Railroad Apartment in Bushwick

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If you want to read the first part of this, you can click here: https://www.sammoritzrealestateagent.com/a-nyc-apartment-journey-part-1-the-post-college-party-apartment-in-southeast-williamsburg/

I became sort of obsessed about moving out of New York City in 2015.

For the first few years of my early twenties, my only aspiration was to live in New York City. But in 2014, I got laid off abruptly from a tech start-up, and set out to blow through most of my savings on a spontaneous solo eurotrip. 

The spending was well worth it: the trip was amazing and life-changing. I interacted with a lot of different people and cultures and the trip changed my entire perspective about life – especially about living in New York City. After returning to the US, I kept thinking about how large the world was and how many other places there were to live and explore. Why should I remain in the city that I had basically lived in for my entire life? 

When I got back to America, I had this intense thought that I should live somewhere else. 

My roommates and I had a lease renewal coming up at our old apartment on Meserole Street in South Williamsburg. I originally told them that I was going to resign, but after I returned to the US, I told them that I was going to move to Detroit. 

In 2015, Detroit was getting a lot of hype. I remember reading an article about how Brooklynites were moving there to open businesses because it was cheaper than NYC. And how you could buy a house for, like, a dollar. That seemed appealing to me. 

I flew to Detroit, rented a car for a week and interviewed for a job downtown at Quicken Loans.

I was offered the job (a sales gig) but bailed on the plan to move. Detroit seemed too small. I couldn’t see myself driving around and building a life in this new city. 

Or maybe I was scared. 

I resigned my lease in Brooklyn. But the feeling that I should live somewhere else never really disappeared. A few months later, I announced to friends, family and roommates that I was moving to Denver. 

I bailed on that, too. 

I feel like I’m not alone in this desire to leave New York City. Especially in my early twenties, I’d hear from people about how NYC was so expensive, how it’s a big grind to live here –  the long hours of working, the busy commutes. 

Now in my thirties, I don’t hear those complaints as much. 

Some people moved away, some didn’t. 

I never moved out of NYC – but I changed my career in the beginning of 2017 and became a full-time real estate agent. This was a change big enough to keep me from thinking about moving away. Working in real estate was – and is – much different than working nine to five and was (and is) an adventure in and of itself.  

I began working at local mid-size brokerage EXR, their office in Williamsburg near my apartment on Meserole Street, in 2017. I chose not to work at bigger firms like Douglas Elliman or Corcoran (I’d try Corcoran later and realize it was not a good experience for me). 

EXR is way less stuffy than the big firms – which is great. When I first met with the EXR recruiter, the people seemed to be very down to earth, excited, and entrepreneurial. Eight years later, my initial impression has been correct. 

Also, a lot of the agents – even now – focus a good amount of their business on renting apartments. We’re all working on bigger deals, but finding sales listings takes time. Even now, I’m in touch with sellers who say they want to sell, but it takes a long time for them (like maybe years) to really come to the table and move forward with selling their property. I don’t blame them – it’s a big decision. 

Still – I have overhead and a lifestyle (which isn’t too excessive) that I need to support. I can’t wait years for a deal. I need consistent cash flow. That’s why renting apartments is good. 

In terms of where I was living, I had outgrown the Meserole Street party apartment – didn’t want friends and guests always in the living room adjacent to my bedroom. 

When it comes to finding housing for yourself, there are two big advantages to being a real estate agent: 

1. You hear about great apartment deals before they hit the market. 
2. You view so many apartments for other clients that you know what you want and where you might want to be. It simplifies the whole apartment search process. 

I had decided that I wanted to remain living in North Brooklyn along the L train. I was still very averse to living in Manhattan – didn’t want the corporate vibe. I felt solidarity about living in North Brooklyn. 

When it was time for me to decide on my next apartment, a listing appeared in the EXR database in a building that I had already been in. I knew that I wanted this newly-available apartment. 

It was a two bedroom, two full bathroom, luxury railroad apartment in one of the most prime parts of Bushwick: off the DeKalb L stop, a half block down from Wyckoff Avenue on Stanhope Street. 

This area is exciting and has a lot of good commerce. For example, my apartment was between two good coffee shops: Milk and Pull, a half block south on Irving Avenue (no longer there, but it’s been replaced by another coffee shop called Werkshop). A block north, on Wyckoff Avenue, is Variety Coffee Roasters. Even though I don’t live in the neighborhood anymore, when I am working in Bushwick, I still make an effort to go to Variety – it’s a big coffee shop on the corner of the building with big windows. A good place to hang out. 

Knickerbocker Bagel, written about in the New York Times recently as having some of the best bagels in NYC, is also a few blocks down from Stanhope Street. 

It’s also a cool part of Bushwick because you’re right on the border of Bushwick and Ridgewood, Queens. It’s a noticeable contrast being in Bushwick, then walking a few blocks north and seeing the buildings change as you walk into Ridgewood, where the buildings are mostly beige brick buildings. 

This area is well connected – the M train is accessible at Knickerbocker Avenue, a few blocks away. 

Back to the apartment in question. 

The railroad apartment is a pretty common apartment layout throughout NYC –  it’s like a long hallway. The kitchen is on one end of the hallway (apartment), with usually a windowless room in the middle. Someone would have to walk through this middle room to get to the bedroom on the opposite end. The last room in the apartment has a window. People sometimes do sleep in the middle room.

But I’ve also seen a lot of these railroad apartments renovated so that the kitchen is in the middle of the apartment (not the end), making for two sunny true bedrooms.  

Roommates like this arrangement because it offers a good amount of privacy – both people living in the apartment have their own side.  

That’s one of the reasons why I chose this apartment and layout. 

But my renovated railroad apartment was a bit more luxurious. 

Not only had it been renovated, but both bedrooms were pretty large (there was not a big living room, which was fine – it was big enough). My bedroom had an en suite full bathroom and we also had laundry in the basement. 

I signed the lease for the apartment, then worked to find a roommate by posting ads on Craigslist.

At the time, for work, I was working on finding a roommate for a client of mine for her apartment in Bed-Stuy. I got a lead for the Bed-Stuy apartment. When I showed the room in question to this lead (a guy), he said the Bed-Stuy room was too small. 

“If you’re interested,” I told him. “I just rented an apartment myself. And I need a roommate. I could show you the room in my apartment, if you want.”

“Yeah man, sounds good.” I showed him the room in my Bushwick apartment. He liked it and  moved forward. 

This first random roommate arrangement could not have gone better. 

Adi was the perfect roommate. He was so cool. He was 36, but was dating a girl who was my age (I was 27 at the time). He was the part owner of a hair salon in Soho, and was Israeli-Palestinian. He was like my cool older brother. We’d hang out a good amount, he’d have his friends over, sometimes I’d have a friend over. But we were also respectful of each other’s space. 

Bushwick definitely felt different than Williamsburg, but it was good for me – I enjoyed living there. It was also close to a lot of the business I was working for real estate.  

Unfortunately, after a year and a half living together, Adi had to leave and go back to Israel. The search was on for another roommate. We had a replacement quickly – Mark. He was also a cool guy, around my age. 

But maybe I was experiencing some kind of hangover from having to start anew with another roommate – I don’t think I was as warm and friendly as I could have been to Mark. 

Still, the arrangement was good enough. Approaching the end of the lease, we agreed that we would resign and stay in the Stanhope Street apartment (this would be my third year living there).

But in South Bushwick, near the Myrtle-Broadway JMZ station, about a twenty minute walk from where we were on the north end of the neighborhood, a new development building had just been completed. The building was receiving a lot of hype: it had hundreds of apartments, and the building was packed with amenities like a pool, bowling alley, and tons of outdoor space. They also held events for their residents, like happy hours and holiday parties. 

The rent was high. 

It was just too expensive and sounded too crazy for me to live there. Right? 

In a decision that stunned Mark (and me), I decided that I would move to this large, new mega building. I would be moving to the Denizen Bushwick, and Mark said he would not be joining.