monastic

Well hello there! I created this account specifically to post this post, as a show of gratitude for the advice from this thread. The name "monastic" illustrates the lifestyle I had to switch to after moving to Boston to study at Hahvahd. Thanks for playing. Here are my 50 cents: Behold this map and despair: http://realestate.boston.com/buying/2016/05/03/map-how-much-costs-mbta-stops/ No, seriously, Boston is crazy expensive. Harvard housing "follows the market" but, really, drives it. With everyone else cheering along, of course. The best thing you can do for yourself is find an apartment NOW and move in on a date which is not Aug 1 or Sep 1. But if Allston Christmas sounds like fun*, take heed of this information: (*the crazy Sep 1 date when Bostonians hide in their lairs and hoards of students come out to fill the streets with u-hauls.) Brief disclaimer: these pieces of advice stem from my utter inability to hold a part-time job while studying toward my PhD. My budget for a studio apartment was and remains in the area of 1500, because I want to eat right and drink some of that alcohol thing everyone raves about. But hey, if you can go just a few hundreds over, good for you, fancy pants. Let's start by area: - Cambridge. Unless you're ready to live in a room in a shared apartment or have some extra income coming in, I found it impossible to find anything there for less than the Harvard housing prices, which are, in my very humble opinion, through the roof. - Legends say that Somerville used to be cheap, but not anymore. The part of Somerville on the Orange line is still a shithole. So I don't see the point of going in that direction, really. - Not all subway lines are created equal. The green line B may look like such a sweet spot, but really, it's a choo-choo train. Buses are terrible, unless you only need one, then it's a breeze with the little help of a transit app to avoid you waiting for 30 min in the cold. The area is nice though, with Brighton clearner and safer than Allston, where all the undergrads are. Then again, if you do find something decent in Allston, by all means, save yourself the commute. - Green line C and D are much faster moving and the area are nicer therefore... you guessed. Too expensive. - Some of my classmates are musing of moving to Wonderland. Not that Harvard is not a wonderland of its own. Bottom line is: blue line is nice, red line is nice, but they don't intersect. No sir. And the Airport area is just depressing - no beer store for late-nite gloom and doom. - Malden is just sad. - Further South down the red line would actually be a smart option, I just wasn't able to find anything decent there, anyone? - Commuter rail is a big mystery to me. Now that GSAS will subsidize the T-pass 50%, perhaps finding something there might not be a bad option and commuting to Porter Sq. for example. Now, to the search: - Searching for flats online yielded nothing for me. Every phone call I made stopped at the landlord asking that I come see the place. The amount of rudeness I experienced baffled me to say the least. It's like they didn't want me to rent their place, wtf?! One of my friends who insisted on being able to get a place this way was still without a contract starting August. The Angst. - So I came to Boston, stayed at an AirBnB and went on a siege of all the realtors out there. After multiple failed attempts my expectations went down but my luck went up, with a moderately decent realtor from Prestige Rental Solutions stipulating that what you see on Craigslist is a way to lure in the student: they list fake adds with low rents, you call them, they say "oh, this one is gone, but for slightly higher price, come see what we got". And so I went and saw and got myself an apartment on the green line B in the Brighton area. Studio at 1500 with heat and water included, but not the gas and hydro. It's OK, really, they are cheap. And the place is decent, I won an epic battle with an illiterate plumber to fix the flow of hot water. Management company: Fineberg are OK although they did do a few staggering things that put my stress level into overdrive such as asking me to renew my contract 8 months before it expired, and setting a new end of contract on Aug 27 instead of Aug 31. We agreed to change but boy was I anxious. - The difficulty was in complying with their requirements that your rent be 30% of your income. There simply ain't got that kind of rent in Boston for our stipends. But some realtors have experience dealing with students, so a copy of my funding letter was enough. - Realtor also recommended taking a flat on the top floor because "vermin does not bother going that high". That advice worked so far. - The realtor was decent only moderately because he did not give me a readable contract, blaming the printer and promising to send me a good copy later. He never did. I should have taken photos with my phone. Also, he said gas would be included, but it was not. But otherwise he was friendly, a rare quality out there in the land of capitalism. If I could change anything, I would have taken that overpriced studio with Harvard housing and live my days between the yard and the broadway market's wine tasting. But then I'd never see downtown and still be scared of the T, as most of my classmate somehow are. It sucks to be one of the few people to commute but what choice do I have, without a rich parent willing to subsidize me or a lawyer spouse with a steady job? Food for thought: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/4/27/minority-students-PhD-pipeline/ Cheers and may the search be swift and painless for you!