A Tale of Wanderlust: I left New York City During Covid Like Many Other People and Have Already Gained Some Good Perspective
By: Sam Moritz
Tags: Wanderlust, Covid 19, New York City

A Tale of Wanderlust: I left New York City During Covid Like Many Other People and Have Already Gained Some Good Perspective Sam Moritz Dec 10, 2020·8 min read

It was a tough year for me, and everyone. Personally, my job was greatly affected by the Pandemic, and more affected, I felt, than it was for some of my other colleagues. Because of that, I was very sad or, more specifically, heartbroken, because I had invested a lot of time and effort into my career just to see it crumble while on the precipice of what I believed was about to be a giant break through in the beginning of 2020. Because things were bad for me, I made a spontaneous decision to leave New York City to try living in another city — a journey that had been on my radar for awhile, but something which I never took seriously enough to execute because I was too entrenched and, for the most part, happy with my life in New York.

My wanderlust was borne from a trip in May of 2015. I was 24 years old, and I had just gotten laid off from a startup tech company abruptly. I had saved a good amount of money from working two years of tech jobs that I found tolerable, if not lucrative, but also not super fun.

Once I was laid off from this particular company, I decided I would take the money I had saved, sublet my bedroom in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and leave. I bought a one way ticket to Copenhagen, Denmark. I traveled through Europe by myself for two and a half months.

I had never studied abroad, and hadn’t spent much time outside of the US. I learned so much while backpacking through Europe. I learned about myself and what it was to be an American. I also came to realize and understand that there were so many other places to live aside from New York City.

For a long time, New York City was everything to me. I had grown up in the city until I was about nine years old, when my parents decided they would move me and my brothers to a neighboring suburb in Connecticut, where we would spend our childhood and teen years. When they took us from New York City, I felt like they had wrestled the city away from me. Returning to the city after college and living there was the only goal I had in mind.

I had lived in Brooklyn for about two years when I took my trip to Europe. After the trip, and after gaining so much perspective about all the types of people living across the world, and all the places where someone can live, I suddenly realized that New York City wasn’t everything. I had gained some valuable and important perspective. After thinking New York City was everything — after my trip, now I wanted to live somewhere else, or at least I thought I did.

In August of 2015, after returning from Europe, I traveled to Detroit. I rented a car, got a job offer from Quicken Loans, and considered moving to the Motor City. But I got cold feet and decided against it. I renewed my lease in Brooklyn.

Six months later, I got the urge again. This time I was going to move to Denver. I announced to family and friends that I was leaving. A month later, I bailed, again, on leaving New York City, and canceled all tentative plans. I stayed put in Brooklyn.

I did transition to a new career in January of 2017, as a residential real estate agent in Brooklyn — and I loved my job. It kept me grounded and happy living in Brooklyn. I loved the hustle of renting apartments in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick. That job is exhilarating — being outside, meeting with clients, prospecting (cold calling) for new business. It’s all so fun and entrepreneurial. Real estate in Brooklyn was great for four years — and each year I got a little bit better, finding more and more new business and learning every year. I truly believe that because of the knowledge and contacts I had gained through the years of working in real estate, that 2020 was going to be the year that I really broke through and made more money than I had ever made before.

Years of hard work were finally beginning to pay off in early March 2020 as I made more commission in just the first ten days of the month than I had ever made in any entire month of March in previous years. In the rental market in New York City, when there are no abnormal events occurring, like a Pandemic, there is more demand of renters than there are apartments to rent — sure, it is important to find a tenant to rent the apartment, but the real key is to have the rental listing, to have the relationship with the landlord who gives the listing, or be associated with a brokerage that can share their listings with an agent, as I had, because as long as the apartment is appropriately priced, and as long as the agent showing it is competent and shows the apartment every time a tenant requests to view it, the apartment will rent within a month, because there is more demand than there is supply. In March of 2020, really the first month of any rental season, I had access to more apartments than I had ever had before, because I had spent years cultivating landlord relationships through cold calling and follow up efforts — I brought many of my own listings into the brokerage I worked with, and further, that same stellar brokerage shared their large portfolio of listings with me. The future was looking really bright on March 10th. I had already rented five apartments in the month and had so many more apartments to go — and they were all on track to rent that month. My earnings for March and beyond were going to be substantial. Then the Pandemic hit.

Once that happened, any prospect of having a career year crumbled — quickly. The rental market stopped on a dime as a New York City exodus began, potential renters now fleeing to the homes they grew up in, leaving New York City for the time being. Not all my colleagues struggled, but for me, there was nothing but a slow trickle of interested renters throughout the spring and summer months. No one seemed to be selling their properties, either. I made 35% of the income in 2020 as I made in 2019 and 2018, and I was very sad and, as mentioned, heartbroken about the real estate market, because I truly thought this was going to be the year I broke through after years of being successful enough, but not out of this world successful. Summers in New York City while working in real estate were some of my favorite moments — working non stop, showing apartments, walking on the streets of Bushwick with the sun beating down on me, caked in the dirt from the streets and the sweat which comes from the efforts of showing apartments. There is something gladiatorial about working in the rental market in Bushwick, something that ignites a competitive spirit within me. Being on the streets of Bushwick, busy showing apartments, while everyone else who works nine to five is relaxing and eating brunch, sparks a passion in me. This year, those moments of competitiveness just didn’t happen. I suffered through the year, and was very sad at times as I spent more time reading Ken Follett novels on the couch in my apartment than I was out showing apartments.

And, as mentioned, a New York City relative exodus had begun: many clients, and a handful of other people I knew or followed on Instagram, were following their work-from-home remote work life dreams. They were moving to Los Angeles, or working remotely for their New York City jobs in Colorado. I couldn’t work remote as a New York City real estate agent, and I had really come so far in my career, building my business every year steadily. But I decided to say fuck it. My own feelings of wanderlust began to permeate into my conscious — memories of moving to Detroit or Denver, and my trip to Europe, began to simmer and rise in my psyche. After a week or so of pondering, my desire to follow these wanderlust dreams began to outweigh my desire to stick it out during a tough time in Brooklyn. The timing couldn’t have been better for me, at least. I was about to turn 30, and I still felt young, didn’t have a serious relationship, or kids. I was pretty free and weightless. I could make the move now —it was still possible for me to do it before life became more complicated! It wasn’t an easy decision to make, and I battled some anxiety about actually making the plunge, but in July, two months before my lease would end in Brooklyn, I decided I would move to Salt Lake City. I chose Salt Lake City because I liked the outdoors, and had heard about all the great hiking and camping available near the city, and also had a close friend living there, and it seemed like it would be pretty different from New York.

I moved to Salt Lake City and dumped my emotional, covid-ravaged, but far from defeated self, and all of my luggage into a small hostel room in downtown Salt Lake on September 30th. I got a full time job for a Utah based company, then signed a six month lease for an apartment, and then bought a car. When I first left New York, I thought I was leaving to escape the struggles of my experience in the New York City real estate market in 2020 — leaving financial hardship and running away from heartbreak. But now I’ve been in Salt Lake City for two and a half months, and I have had time to reflect on why I came here. The truth is that while perhaps the lack of real estate market forced me to consider alternative options, the real reason why I left is because I had always wanted to try a different city since my trip to Europe. Because I am enlightened, and also burdened, by wanderlust. The affects of the Pandemic pushed me to make a difficult decision that I had sat on and pondered for a long time.

And so far, even in just the short few, covid-defined months I have been here, I have already gained perspective about what it is like to live New York City. I miss New York City every day — I miss the energy, the subways, the people on the streets. Salt Lake City feels like a small, sleepy town. That’s not to say Salt Lake is not cool. Salt Lake is cool, and has a lot to offer — its sunny every day, I go hiking every weekend, and I plan to go skiing as much as possible starting this coming weekend, because the ski resorts are only a 20 minute drive away. I have a beautiful, luxurious apartment, for about $500 less than I was paying for the last bedroom I rented inside of a two bedroom apartment in Bushwick.

So while my trip to Europe helped me gain perspective about living outside of New York, this covid-era decision has now given me perspective about how special New York City is. I plan to one day return to the city that created me, and my love for it as grown as I have lived outside of it for the first time in my adult life.

I am happy that I made the leap. It wasn’t an easy decision and I struggled immensely before leaving. I’m not sure how long I will be here, but the affects of the Pandemic on my business pushed me to go for it. The bottom line is that leaving the great city of New York has given me a deeper appreciation for it, and that I am also now living out a dream of mine. So, maybe in some ways the Pandemic had SOME positive affects: all the New Yorkers who struggled to manifest their wanderlust dreams, now have the opportunity to experience and explore those desires while the world is turned on its head, and perhaps find some new kind of deeper appreciation for the great, international capital of the world which is New York City.