Natasha Pearce only visited New York once, for 10 days on the age of 24, before deciding she wanted to go away Australia and make the town her home.
She got here as a tourist, renting a room within the Upper East Side on Airbnb, and immediately felt the thrill round her.
“All the things I saw in movies growing up, I finally saw them in real life,” said Pearce, 30. “We went to shows on Broadway, Top of the Rock and the Statue of Liberty. We went to Times Square. Everything seemed exciting.”
But it might take time—and plenty of relocations—to make the leap.
She returned to Brisbane but was beginning to do reconnaissance to see how a gentle 10,000 mile move would work.
“I texted the girl whose room we were renting out and I remember asking her, ‘How did you progress to New York? How much did it cost?’ I got all the knowledge I could from her because I used to be very interested, I hope to live there in the future,” Ms Pearce said.
When Australia closed its borders through the pandemic, her homesickness increased. At the tip of 2021, when international travel was re-sanctioned, she waited long enough.
“This is the time,” he recalls.
Finding a landing spot, nonetheless, might be harder than she expected. She arrived in May 2022 with two suitcases and a few savings, staying in hotels while she searched Facebook apartment rental groups for a sublease that might accept a tenant with no work visa and no credit history within the United States. In June, she found one – a $2,700-a-month windowless room in a Lower East Side apartment, and offered to pay $3,000 simply to seal the deal.
“I used to be so desperate. It was a crazy time, she said.
She was given a windowless sublease, but she knew that if she didn’t get a job too, she would have to go away the country once her 90-day tourist visa expired. So she focused on her job search in addition to her degree in marketing and digital strategy, which she earned online.
New York, while still exciting, seemed more complicated this time around. She was concerned about gun safety within the United States, and the town appeared to be struggling more with homelessness and crime. After being a tourist on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the contrasts on the Lower East Side were evident.
“It’s a bit dirty,” she admitted. “But it also has plenty of character and lots occurring.”
She had to go away the sublease in July and still hasn’t found a job. She didn’t need to go home, so she went to Spain, the country where she studied abroad and spoke the language, buying herself one other 90 days on one other tourist visa while continuing her online job search in New York. She almost gave up.
“I got to the purpose where I could not support myself financially if I didn’t discover a job, and I began searching for work in each New York and Sydney,” she said. However, because the three-month deadline approached in October, she was offered the position of digital marketing coordinator in New York with offices within the financial district.
$1540 PER PART | LITTLE ITALY, MANHATTAN
Natasha Pearce, 30
Occupation: He is the digital marketing coordinator at The New York Academy of Sciences.
About occupying the smallest room: “No one else really wanted it and someone needed to take it,” Ms Pearce said. “It’s a small bedroom with one small window and a small walk-in closet with no doors. But I used to be glad to avoid wasting some money.”
On the brilliant side of so many moves: “It was difficult and I felt insecure. But the positive side was that I got to experience life in so many boroughs of New York.”
Mrs. Pearce returned to New York along with her two suitcases before Thanksgiving.
However, this time finding a long-term landing site would prove just as irritating.
From Spain, Mrs. Pearce found one other month-long sublease, this time a sunny rented bedroom in a two-bedroom apartment in NoLIta. The $2,100 price tag was inexpensive to her, and he or she noticed a trend while browsing through Facebook listings.
During the pandemic, dozens of online posters were buying apartments for rent below the speed, and now they were facing a rent increase of 40 percent or more. They tried to seek out recent housing that might be cheaper, often abandoning their old premises before their leases expired.
“Everyone was desperate to seek out something, and when you find it before your lease expires, just take it and find another person to take during the last month before the rent goes up,” she said.
She also checked out long-term options on StreetEasy, hoping to remain below $2,000 a month and a brief subway ride from her office. But property owners consistently turned her down: without references from previous owners within the United States, she couldn’t compete in a crowded pool of applicants.
“Signing the lease was really difficult for me,” she said.
After two weeks at NoLIta, panic set in and he or she modified gears and went back to scouring Facebook for short-term subleases.
She found one other tenant who was leaving a studio in Chelsea ahead of the approaching rent increase, and was relieved when she got a short-term landing in a luxury constructing with a roof and a gym for $2,200 a month. The landlord warned that he would soon raise the rent to $4,000, so the tenant moved out.
Her two suitcases were now overflowing with bedding, cooking utensils, exercise equipment, and trinkets, and he or she too was lugging cardboard boxes.
She stayed at Airbnb in February and have become upset when she realized she would need to sublet again. She called Uber XL to assist her carry her stuff and moved right into a two-bedroom apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for $1,600 a month, crammed so tightly under the Marcy Avenue stop on the Williamsburg Bridge that she heard the MTA’s Automated Announcements each time she left. a train was passing.
“I told myself this may be my last short-term sublease,” she said. “I’ve come to date that I could not turn back.”
In March, she received a Facebook message from Alyssa Vitolo, 26, who works in a travel agency and whose lease was coming to an end. Ms Vitolo had already connected via Facebook with Mariel Jastrebsky, a food and beverage scientist who can be 26, and the 2 women were searching for an apartment. They found a three-bedroom apartment for $4,900 a month in Little Italy and were searching for a 3rd woman to hitch them.
Ms. Vitolo and Ms. Pearce FaceTimed for a 10-minute chat, and without meeting Ms. Jastrebsky, Ms. Pearce agreed to hitch their trio. The landlord didn’t query Mrs. Pearce’s ability to sign the contract, so she signed the lease before seeing the apartment.
“As time went by, I used to be getting increasingly desperate, but I used to be also having really good vibes,” she said.
After splitting the $9,800 security deposit and the primary month’s rent equally, the three women visited the apartment, and Mrs. Pearce selected the smallest room. She currently pays $1,540 a month and her roommates pay $1,680 each. The room has a full bed and a chest of drawers, and when she works from home she goes to the kitchen table or a close-by coffee shop.
The furniture was mainly provided by Mrs. Vitolo and Mrs. Jastrebsky, and Mrs. Pearce donated a used TV that she bought for $150.
Despite being forced by the rental market, the three women became friends. When Ms. Pearce ran the Brooklyn Half Marathon in April, they drove to Coney Island within the rain to cheer her on.
“It’s very nice to settle in,” said Mrs. Pearce. “I moved my stuff about 11 times in 11 months in three different countries. It’s something I’ve been working on for a really very long time.”
