Kelly Kreth

If you’re heading to NYC for school or your first job, you might not have a choice; a roommate might be the only way to make the city affordable. So with that in mind, here are some horror stories—not intended to frighten you as much as help you to suss out the bad seeds from the get-go.

A rent-stabilized, luxury studio on the Upper East Side is the unicorn of apartments, until the AC goes on the fritz.

You don’t know what it’s like to really live here, and what you do know about your apartment, or your building, seems strange and unnerving.

It's a good idea for any stabilized tenant to know how to do a rent history search and there is a number of things to look for: Unusual jumps in the rent, leases for less than a year, fictitious tenants who never lived in the apartment.  

After writer Kelly Kreth unearthed some tragic stories about about deaths in her apartment building, she turned to Beau Bender, a NYC-based spiritual healer for advice.

“What We Do in the Shadows” about four vampires living together (think: “The Real World” but with fangs) is in a Gothic mansion in modern-day Staten Island. The comedy is based on a 2014 mockumentary of the same name about vampire roomies living in New Zealand. When adapting it, director Jermaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords’ fame opted to pick a new American location. He explains he chose NYC’s “forgotten borough” because it was the place to hide out.