Lucy Cohen Blatter

Even if your building bans pets, you may have to bend the rules for an apartment dweller with a mental or physical disability, from cancer to blindness to anxiety. Federal, state and city laws require that building owners and landlords accommodate tenants who need service animals, even for emotional support.

Real estate search sites have been around for years, letting users mine data on everything from the percentage of singles in their neighborhood to the year their building was constructed.

Budget apartment-hunting in the city often means coming up against what Apartment Therapy calls "kitchen walls." Also known as Pullman kitchens, they're the kind of layout where all your appliances and counters are arranged in a line along a single wall. Not ideal if you love to cook, but not the worst thing ever. Especially with these tricks to make them feel roomier from the interior design blog:

Finding a large, family-sized apartment in New York City is no easy task, and what might pass as a small one-bedroom in another city is often shared by families of three, four and more here. That's why we gravitated toward this Bed-Stuy duplex condo at 238A Franklin Avenue, which rings in at over 2,000 square feet. In New York, that's a mansion.