Getting here
Of all the sections of NYC, we easily narrowed our apartment search to the Upper West Side.
Once we discovered this area of the city, we didn’t want to look elsewhere.
What did we love about it?
- Being between two parks (Central Park and Riverside Park)
- Neighborhood feel with parents and children walking to school and work, and lots of people walking their dogs
- Charming, tree-lined residential streets
- Avenues with plenty of excellent and specialty grocery stores and independent retail shops
- Many transportation options to all other sections of the city
No other part of NYC gave us the same calm, homey feel so we knew the Upper West Side was where we wanted to be.
Finding the overall location was simple. Finding the right apartment for us within that location was not.
We were looking for a classic, pre-war apartment on a quiet street with a nice view. Sounds pretty simple, pretty standard, right? Wrong.
We looked at countless apartments over many, many months. There were numerous issues among the steady stream of apartments we viewed: those on busy streets, those with odd layouts, those with terrible views (some I equated to looking out onto Mordor), and those that were either too small, too expensive, or needed too much renovation.
Eventually, we found “the one.” Once we found it, we had no idea the complicated and lengthy process of being under contract (the time period between accepted offer and closing). There were endless documents to review, a board interview to pass, and title and permit searches to complete. To make things more exacerbating, we had a prolonged delay due to a decades-old, open permit that needed to be closed before we could set a closing date – this took an additional 3-4 months.
Next stage
Now that we own it, our renovation journey begins.
We bought an “estate” property (which means it’s old and needs plenty of updating). But we love the bones and are excited to get started.
Check out our posts and watch the transformation!