How Long Do You Suppose This Will Last?

The economics of New York City dictate that full-fledged, non-related adults live together, sometimes four to an apartment, regardless of one’s budget. The Times looks at one such living situation [emphasis on unavoidable red flags added throughout]:

Being a sociable kind of guy, Otis Hart formed a group of four friends who would all live together.

Finding a four-bedroom apartment was easy. Mr. Hart put a $100 cash deposit on the third place he set foot in – a sunny, soaring duplex that was truly magnificent, as long as you looked beyond the filth, the dog waste and the general vagrant feel. A bad omen?

“It was not an easy place to show because there were dirty clothes and garbage everywhere, and not all the lights were working,” said Annie Santiago, an agent at Kline Realty in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who showed Mr. Hart the place, which rented for $3,500.

. . .

He needed roommates who would commit to a two-year lease, tolerate an uncertain move-in date and fork over three extra months’ rent (for the security deposit and broker’s fee).

Mr. Hart avoided the obvious channel, the Web site Craigslist, the real estate resource of first and last resort. “I don’t like dealing with unknown commodities,” he said. “I have so many friends, why not exhaust that before dealing with Craigslist?”

. . .

He dispatched a mass e-mail message to 83 of his contacts plus a list of 428 people in the music field.

His note extolled the features of the apartment, including his “60-inch TV, a super stereo and all the free music you could ever want.”

Hart assembled a volatile group of desperate urbanites, including the underemployed college graduate itching to move out of his parents’ home:

More than 20 people replied, but only one was really eager to move in. That was Mark Davis, 23, who had worked at the Middlebury College radio station, as Mr. Hart had a few years prior.

Mr. Davis was staying with a college friend and his family on the Upper East Side. “I needed to get out of their hair and start my own life,” he said. He got a job at the Strand bookstore and saved some money. Before he even saw the place, he told Mr. Hart he would move in.

Mr. Hart was encouraged. “Mark was a sort of a life preserver,” he said.

The overextended and overpaying:

The next recruit was Jeff Seelbach, 25, a Northwestern University graduate from Short Hills, N.J., who wrote for dustedmagazine.com. Mr. Seelbach and a roommate were living nearby, paying around $900 each for a ground-floor apartment. Their door opened onto the sidewalk, storefront-style, which he hated.

And rounding out the group, the lone female at her wit’s end, buckling under external pressures:

Rosemary Simon was more concerned about having three male roommates. Ms. Simon, 23, from Skokie, Ill., had graduated from DePaul University. She stayed first in a sublet in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, then at an uncle’s house in the Bronx.

She tried to find something permanent on Craigslist, checking out prospective roommates via the online sites Google and Friendster. All seemed to be drug addicts or control freaks, she said.

A friend of a friend, who had an internship at a music magazine, sent her Mr. Hart’s e-mail plea. By now, Ms. Simon, an administrative assistant who plans to go to graduate school, was living on East 117th Street with two friends of friends. Her $500 a month bought her hot water that vanished for days at a time. In her closet, a message was scrawled: “R.I.P. Miguel, 2004.”

. . .

Then, one of her roommates on East 117 Street quit her job. She couldn’t desert the penniless group in its hour of need. “Otis sent me a bunch of gentle reminders,” she said. “He had to court me into living here.” Then, “I was baking cookies one night and the lights flashed.” It could be only one thing: “the ghost of Miguel.” She had to get out. She e-mailed Mr. Hart. The place was still available.

And now the four are living (together) happily ever after:

The four congregated as a group for the first time at the lease signing, and became fast friends. Now, they listen for hours to each other’s music. Everyone they know gathers there, watching sports on the huge TV.

“I still wake up wondering how it all happened,” Mr. Hart said. “The situation I have now is so great only because my other roommates dropped me.”

As for Ms. Simon, who likened the group to “pound puppies,” finally happy at home, “my fears about living with the guys were unwarranted and ridiculous,” she said. “It worked out almost too well, like we are a really strange musical cult/family. It’s like I’ve got three annoying older brothers.”

I give it six to nine months . . .