All The Sneaky, Hidden Costs That Made My “Affordable” Luxury Apartment Too Good To Be True

Ah, luxury apartments. Everyday living made to feel like a five-star hotel getaway. Relaxing by a rooftop pool rosé in hand, a doorman to collect your packages and hail your cabs, and the bliss of in-unit laundry (yes, a total luxury in cities like NYC). Swoon.

Living in a luxury apartment sounded like a dream to me, but in reality, this fancy-living fantasy never materialized outside of the rom-com that put it in my head in the first place. I soon discovered that there isn’t much of a qualification process for a management company to call themselves “luxury,” leading many luxury apartment leases to be more or less a scam: hiking up rent while offering a few barely-functioning amenities.

I ended up getting swindled by a “luxury” apartment management company and learned the hard way about the true cost of living the high life.

The cost of my “luxury” living situation on paper

通常，至少在纽约市，房东或管理公司希望租户至少要赚取每年租金的三倍或40 times the monthly rent。I was looking at a studio apartment that was $1,745 a month or $20,940 for the year, which meant to qualify I should make about $63,000.

我还不是那个薪水，但我真的很想要公寓。它在设备中洗衣服！它有洗碗机！它有一切！我对拥有我长大的郊区设施的想法使我眼花azz乱。在填写申请时，我的全职薪水和自由职业工作总共赚了50,000美元。这使我落后于合格工资，以获得公寓的批准，但诚然，我在成年的费用方面得到了一些帮助。我父亲涵盖了我的电话账单，汽车保险和健康保险（因为我还没有26岁），而我的学生贷款付款也不可怕，每月200美元。

根据每月的租金和公用事业，我进行了数学工作，并确定我仍然可以在这家豪华公寓居住时支付账单，因为我没有其他成年人的额外费用。但是，我确实需要该应用程序的薪水更高。

真实豪华生活的成本：隐藏费用

My dad agreed to co-sign my application, and I was accepted. Hello, waterfront views! Oh hi, gym within walking distance! Everything was fine and dandy, and I paid the security deposit and signed the paperwork. That’s when the hidden fees started rolling in.

前期，我知道每月有50美元的便利费，在签署租约后以600美元的价格支付。然后，我的完美婴儿天使猫每月每月50美元的宠物费。但是，除了每月额外的费用外，我还欠了500美元的宠物费，无论我租了多长时间，无论是五个月还是五年。（租金时，请注意，费用是一次性付款，而您将获得押金。）加起来我的保证金，便利费和宠物费，我的银行帐户仅对我获得了重大打击，以获取钥匙。

More and more unexpected “luxury” costs popped up, many that I’d never had while renting other “normal” apartments in Brooklyn and Queens. For example:

• Mandatory renter’s insurance: $180 a year.
• Utilities：我支付了一项服务费，只是为了挂上城市水和下水道。也出乎意料吗？服务费仅是为了收到该账单。
• Automatic rent payments: $10/month. Another unexpected service charge for the convenience of paying my rent automatically. Upon moving out, I was told to call my bank and block their withdrawals because a “glitch in the software” would keep pulling my rent if I set up automatic payments.
• Parking：$ 65/月。可选的，但免费的街道停车场总是装满或巡逻停车票。
• 软件包储物柜: $20/month (and a $20 service fee) to get set up to retrieve packages out of a locker or the open lobby — not even from a person.
• Trash valet: $35/month. It was mandatory to pay somebody to pick up my trash outside of my door, despite the trash chute being a 15-second walk down the hall. And if I didn’t follow the proper procedure to put my trash out? I’d be fined. So, rather than risk being fined more, I never once used the service, despite paying for it.
• 运输：~$150/month. In addition to my monthly train pass for $90/month, the apartment complex provided a free shuttle to the train station. BUT it was often full in the morning, causing me to pay for another connecting train. The shuttle hours were also only during commuting hours, so any nights out or weekend trips would require an Uber to get to and from this isolated complex.
• 健身房和游泳池的便利费: $50/month. I expected this and paid for it upfront. However, I was not expecting a tiny, overcrowded gym full of broken equipment. Most residents said they paid for a separate gym membership despite having this one included.

In the end, my $1,745 apartment turned into over $2,100 a month, which would need a $75,600 yearly salary rather than the $63,000 management originally asked for to qualify (that doesn’t include the billing glitch that cost me $1,000 – but that’s another story). Already cutting it close, I was swamped in charges I didn’t calculate into my monthly budget. So much for the boutique fitness classes and Broadway shows I had in mind — all of my free income went into my luxury apartment, which I ended up spending a lot of time in since I couldn’t afford to go out.

我如何维持生计

Fortunately, I was able to pick up extra freelance work to meet most of my bills, and I have a savings cushion just in case. But many others fall into the luxury apartment trap without a fall-back plan. Even if I did make enough to qualify without a co-signer, the added expenses would have still added up to more than three times the rent.

My main takeaway was that I shouldn’t have stretched my budget to its limits in the first place by using my dad cosigning to get me into the apartment. Every “luxury” amenity came with a service charge. Management charged as little as $5 whenever and wherever they could. On top of all of these fees, the management company was terrible, too, not communicating, sending incorrect bills, not attentive to maintenance, etc.

Between my own experience and those of several friends who have signed leases for “luxury apartments” in the New York City area, not one of us has ever renewed our lease. The truth is, you pay an exorbitant amount of money for a marginally better living experience — essentially, modern design and a doorman. Okay, maybe air conditioning and in-unit laundry, too. Despite everything, I have to admit: I will miss that washer and dryer.

图像通过Pexels

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