strange thing has happened to us, two undesirable Brits with no credit rating to speak of on the house hunt in New York City: we’ve suddenly become desirable. Last year, when we scrambled to find a place after our landlord announced she was selling our building, estate agents literally put down the phone when we told them neither of us were citizens. Seasoned apartment-hunters on the NYC market gave us sympathetic looks when we described our situation to realtors at open houses: recent expats, just one year of tax returns, a lopsided-fanged vampire soot-gremlin of a cat who may or may not destroy the carpets.
At the beginning of 2020, we applied to 12 apartments and were turned down for all but one. We lived out the year in a windowless box with walls so thin that I have genuine opinions on what Sarah in Apartment 3 needs to do about Dwayne’s habit of walking past the dishes in the kitchen sink every evening. And in the past month, back on the market, we threw in a couple of applications for ridiculously nice apartments and steeled ourselves for the inevitable rejections. Then they… just didn’t come.
Instead, estate agents were calling us on the phone. The first time I picked up to an unknown number and heard, “Hi, this is Jacob from Friendly Brooklyn Real Estate”, I assumed it was some kind of cynical prank.
