Michelle Castillo

When I first met my live-in-super-who-actually-lived-down-the-block, I was confused when he insisted that the front door was always secure and not to worry.

It took a day to realize that my real estate agent neglected to mention that my apartment was right next door to a housing project, and many of its residents liked to loiter around my building’s entrance at night since it was next door to an all-night bodega.

(The bodega boasted an extravagant beer section, which kept the conversation lively all night long.)

It was August, and I had an empty apartment to fill. All I had brought with me from Los Angeles was three suitcases of clothes, a few pencil thin scarves and a shocking amount of makeup.

I needed all the household necessities (dishes, cups, cooking and eating utensils) and the big stuff too, including a television, a coffee table, sofa, bed, desk.

A picture is worth a thousand words. But if it’s a picture of a New York City apartment, you’re going to need a million more phrases to properly assess what the place really looks like.

Two weeks after renting my first NYC apartment without leaving Los Angeles, I grabbed the keys from my “live-in” super who, as it turned out, resided a couple blocks away from the building I was about to call home.

With open window season upon us, sleeping through the night in one of New York City's vertical villages is more of a nightmare than ever.

“For $100 dollars more than you’re willing to pay, I could get you an approximately 300 square foot railroad apartment,” said the Manhattan real estate broker I’d never laid eyes on.

“Railroad apartment?” I said last August from my spacious two-bedroom college apartment in L.A.  “I’d be near a railroad!?”

Finding an apartment to rent in Manhattan when you live nearby (and already know the lingo) is one thing; doing it from across the country without ever checking it out is another.