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A
Pair of Out-of-Towners Find a Home in New
York
TRISH
HALL
06/04/00
IN
these days of scarce rentals and high
prices, it is natural to assume that young
and charming naifs from out of town will
get trampled by New York's Darwinian real
estate system.
Well,
forget that assumption. Jeremy Harger and
Tyra Hillsten, both now 26, met as high
school students in Albany, Ore., and went
on to Westmont College together, in Santa
Barbara, Calif. They married at the end of
their junior year and, after graduation,
moved to Portland and took jobs, he in
graphic design and she in marketing.
Neither had lived anywhere but the West
Coast. Neither had ever been to New York,
not even once.
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777 West End Avenue
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Yet
somehow, without the assistance
of relatives or friends, or of
powerful mentors with
rent-stabilized apartments to
dangle, they found a very large
and sunny one-bedroom apartment
on the Upper West Side with a
view of the Hudson River, in a
pleasant doorman building on West
End Avenue near 98th Street. The
rent is $2,270 a month, which in
this market makes it almost a
bargain. Like the church they are
now attending, and like the large
wire cage that is home to their
two rabbits, they found it
through an Internet site.
There were, of course, the
obligatory miserable experiences
and frustrating detours along the
way. When Mr. Harger and Ms.
Hillsten moved here last year Mr.
Harger's employer, Cole &
Haan, a division of Nike, set
them up with a real estate broker
who was supposed to get them
settled.
They
weren't impressed. The broker
would show them places they
liked, and then admit that the
rent was way over their budget.
"He wasn't very helpful," Mr.
Harger said. And they were
mystified by his
behavior.
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"After
he showed us apartments, he would just
leave us," Mr. Harger said. They would be
on a street corner, not knowing where they
were, surprised that the broker had just
darted off without returning them to their
temporary home in Gramercy Park, supplied
by Cole &
Haan."
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Finally
the broker found them a "little dive" on
the Upper East Side, Mr. Harger said,
for $2,200 a month. But they were
desperate, and were considering it, even
though, Ms. Hillsten said, "it was the
grossest thing I had ever seen; the guy
hadn't cleaned his apartment since he
moved in in 1990.
When they went home that night, "we were
both feeling sick," Mr. Harger said. In a
final try, surfing the Web, they found a
site for the Landings, an apartment
complex across the Hudson from Manhattan,
in West New York, N.J., where they could
have a large one-bedroom apartment for
$1,800 a month, along with a fitness
center and no buildup of dirt from years
of previous tenants. Many of the
development's residents take the nearby
ferry for the commute to Manhattan.
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And
so they signed a seven-month lease. "It
was a great apartment complex," Ms.
Hillsten said. "And it was very romantic
in the fall," riding the ferry from New
Jersey to New York. But the charm faded
over time, as the water grew colder and
they were less entranced by the process of
rushing to buses and subways in Manhattan
to meet the ferry schedule.
"We
weren't really experiencing the city," Mr.
Harger said. "We were going home exhausted
every night." Living there, Ms. Hillsten
said, was a big barrier to friendships
with people they were meeting in
Manhattan.
ONCE
Ms. Hillsten found a job, she now works as
an assistant account executive for the
Jordan McGrath Case & Partners
advertising agency, they knew that they
could afford more, and that it was time to
try Manhattan once again. "We're like,
no brokers," Ms. Hillsten
said.
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They
looked at newspaper ads, and noticed one
for an apartment being rented by
Rent-Direct.com.
They logged onto the company's site and
found that for a fee of $169, users get
access to the company's listings until
they find an apartment. The company says
it provides listings from more than 325
landlords in Manhattan. It also e-mails
customers with newly arriving apartments
that meet their needs, and shows plans and
photos that make it easy to look without
leaving home.
Within
two weeks, the couple had found the place
at 777 West End Avenue. In March, they
moved into the apartment, with its long,
roomy kitchen, very big dining area, large
living room with that river view, and
large bedroom.
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In
one corner of the living room is Mr.
Harger's small sculpture of a sumo
wrestler; on the walls are some copies he
made of works by van Gogh, his favorite
painter. Although there is a striking red
rug and a big green couch, the
rabbits, Lily and Sydney, seductively
soft and floppy, become the stars. They
lounge about on the rug, like dogs, using
a litter box when necessary; on good days,
they are treated to cocoa
pebbles.
Or
they use their large cage that sits
against a living room wall. "We spent an
extra $100 to give them a three-level
condo," Ms. Hillsten said. But they
needn't have bothered with the top floor.
"It turns out they have a fear of
heights," she said.
Before
the couple moved to New York, the rabbits
had their own bedroom, one of the three in
the suburban Portland house that Mr.
Harger and Ms. Hillsten built two years
after they were married.
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Ms.
Hillsten was not eager to leave. She loved
working in the yard of her
1,600-square-foot house, with its mortgage
payments of $1,200 a month. "I'd go out
with scissors and cut herbs," she said.
Just as her husband was offered the new
position in New York, she was promoted to
sales rep at her company.
As
her husband was having discussions about
the job, "I was dragging my feet most of
the way," she said. "For me, Portland was
perfect. You have Mount Hood, and the
beautiful river."
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But
living in Manhattan, she said, has changed
her feelings. She likes being close to all
the stores she needs. "I've always lived
in a city or a suburb where you drive 10
minutes for everything," Ms. Hillsten
said. She likes Central Park, where she
runs; he likes the architecture, and the
pizza.
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They
sold their car a few weeks ago; it was too
expensive, they said, and they didn't need
it. They've been trying Indian food, "all
those new flavors I had never experienced
before," Mr. Harger said. And like all
newcomers to the Upper West Side who like
to cook, the discovery of the Fairway
market was an important moment.
Now
they are living the fantasy that Mr.
Harger had back in Oregon, when his image
of New York came from scenes in "You've
Got Mail," which on their DVD version also
gives maps and photos of Upper West Side
institutions like Riverside Park and H
& H Bagel.
New
York life is more expensive, though, and
they have been forced to go back to a
budget, as in their early married days.
"Jeremy says I should think of it as
graduate school," Ms. Hillsten said. And
like all good graduate students, she has a
few herbs on her window sill, a reminder
of a past garden, or a harbinger of a
future one.
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