[Music] i get a lot of from friends and co-workers when i say that i live in new
jersey but we really love jersey city i used to live on the upper east side
i was surrounded by tons of restaurants there was a lot of energy but i also kind of felt
like i never really got an escape it was so busy that i never really was able to relax so
what i love about jersey city is that there's a lot less of that intensity and that high energy
hi welcome to my apartment in jersey city
my name is molly i'm 27 years old i live in jersey city new jersey
in a two-bedroom apartment with my boyfriend and we pay 4320 dollars in rent a month
i'm a cultural strategist at a consulting agency in manhattan
and my boyfriend works in real estate [Music]
so currently we have about a 60 40 split of the rent my boyfriend pays 60 and then i pay about
40 we kind of arrived on that just based on what we were both comfortable paying i didn't want him
to be paying drastically more than i was even though he does make a lot more money than i do
[Music]
we have a corner unit in this current apartment which is great so we've got
gorgeous views of jersey city looking west and we also have views of new york city looking north so
we can see the empire state building in some parts of midtown as well which is always a view that our
guests love i always say to people you get the best views of new york city from jersey city
our building has a lot of amenities which we really love there is a 24-hour concierge
service downstairs there's also a package room and an amazon hub we also have a coffee bar
and lounge on the first floor there's also a gym with peloton bikes and a fitness studio and then
we also have a pool deck as well as a grilling area on the ninth floor i feel like there's a
lot of misconceptions about jersey city that it's like not really a fun or interesting place to be
a lot of people like to put jersey city down because they think it's so far outside the
city but for me it's just so easy to get into downtown if i want to i think that when people
come over and they actually see our apartment they kind of realize why we actually do live
[Music] here so we were originally living in a one-bedroom apartment in the same building
we were paying about 3012 a month in rent for that but during the pandemic we both were working from
home so we were very crowded and we definitely needed more space so we started looking for
two-bedroom apartments or one-bed dens to kind of
set up a home office that we would have more space and flexibility with our work schedules
i think we didn't want to end up spending drastically more
than our last one-bedroom apartment and we wanted to make sure that was within both of our budgets
my boyfriend does make more money than i do so we had to make sure that you know i was also
comfortable with the situation we were in we actually were looking to potentially move to
brooklyn um because i have a lot of friends there and we wanted to try a new neighborhood out so we
looked at a couple of places there the amenities and some of the brooklyn buildings were not as
nice as the ones that we were accustomed to here in our current building so then we kind of came
back to our current building that we were living in and they had a two-bedroom apartment that was
available that was perfect for us and that fit within our budget so we decided to stay in dirty
city and also i'm from new jersey originally so it's nice for me to be close to home as well
[Music]
our upfront move-in costs were first month's rent which was four thousand three hundred and twenty
dollars and then a security deposit for fifteen hundred dollars which my boyfriend and i split
evenly so that's a total of five thousand eight hundred and twenty dollars to move in
so actually the security deposit from our previous apartment just rolled over into
this new one so we didn't actually have to pay any more out of pocket costs for the security deposit
and when they did the inspection of the apartment after we moved out we received the full security
deposit back we didn't have to pay for any incidentals or damages so that was really great
it's got such a great community feel i'm just five minutes to manhattan
on the exchange place path so if i want to go into manhattan it's very easy for me
but it's also a great place to hang out there's a lot of amazing restaurants and bars in the
grove street area that are all within a five to ten minute walking distance from our apartment
we've got ample hills downstairs next door we've also got a sushi restaurant
right downstairs we like to go for walks along the water there's a really beautiful walkway
along the hudson river with a really great view of the city skyline that was really nice for us
to do during the pandemic when there wasn't a lot open just to go out and get some fresh air
so when you walk into our apartment we have a little entryway a little hallway on your
left hand side there is a bathroom when you walk through the rest of the apartment we have a big
kitchen living dining room space with windows on both walls we've got a lot of really great
counter space here i try to cook as much as possible when i can and i can also watch tv
while i cook which is really amazing this is where we spend most of our time relaxing
watching tv occasionally working on the couch here this couch was actually a pandemic purchase
we really needed to reinvest in a better couch the one that we had was super old
this is our little dining area this piece is actually one of my favorite things in
the apartment um it's a dining set from west elm but i actually got it on facebook
marketplace for like three hundred dollars when normally it retails for like 1500.
so this is our bedroom i really love this space it's super comfortable and calming i really love
west elm's mid-century collection so we got a couple of pieces from that so this is by far
my favorite room in the whole apartment this is my home office during the daytime i usually get
priority over the space because i need the desktop and a second screen to do my work and my boyfriend
usually works out in the kitchen area but at night my boyfriend usually gets priority over
the space to play video games with his friends in addition to the home office space we also kind
of have a little at home gym section with some weights and yoga mats even though we do have a gym
on the ninth floor we sometimes just like to be able to do workouts in our own space
i'd say we both feel pretty comfortable with the amount of rent that we're paying right now
i'm more of a saver while my boyfriend likes to spend a little bit more so i think we balance
each other out i feel like we get a lot more for our money here even though we are paying
a significant amount in rent we have such great amenities we've got such great space
we've got beautiful views of the city so for me it's a lot more worth it
i don't think that we're in a rush to buy property anytime soon i think we're pretty happy renting
for the next few years but it is something down the line that i think that we would be open to
if we were to buy i think it probably would be in jersey city it's quite young you do see a lot of
young families here so i could definitely see putting down roots here in the future
you