To Sublet, or Not to Sublet...Now THERE'S a Question.

So, earlier this week we got pretty excited...we thought we had a great lead on an apartment! Eric found it on Craigslist. It's actually a sublease in the West 54th building that we looked at and liked so much this weekend! It's a one-bedroom apartment on the 5th floor, with a courtyard/sundeck view and pass-through kitchen. And the best part, it's $200 less per month than renting a one-bedroom through the building itself. 

The current tenant is a girl who just finished law school and will be moving to L.A. in mid-August, so the timing is perfect. Her lease is up in November, so we would sublet until then, and then we would have the option to sign our own lease at that point. We thought that could be great, because it would give us a chance to see if we really do like the building and the neighborhood, so we can better decide if we want to sign a one- or two-year lease on our own (or if we hate it, we can get the heck out of there!). 

The catch is, it just might be more of a hassle than we're looking for. We'd have to apply both with the building and with this girl, sign contracts with both, and she wants our first month's rent in advance PLUS a one-month security deposit. She says she will refund the security deposit after we move out, when she receives a signed letter from the building saying that we don't owe anything for damages to the unit. A one-month security deposit isn't abnormal, and we're certainly prepared to pay a security deposit on whatever apartment we find, but we have lots of questions for this one that need to be answered first. Like, she says she'll refund the deposit after we move out...but what if we end up signing our own lease and living there for a few years? Will she just have our money indefinitely? Will the building do an inspection regardless in November so we can get our money back from her? What about any damages that SHE has caused in her 8 months of living there? Will they do an inspection after she moves out so that we know what was caused by her and what was caused by us? Also, is it fair to us to pay a full month's rent as security deposit -- which is the standard deposit for a one-year lease -- when we're only going to be subletting for 4 months? And so on, and so on. We understand that she needs to look out for herself in this situation, but we want to make sure we're taken care of also.

Plus, part of the big appeal of this building was the lack of security deposit. It sure would help us out to save that money up front, so we can have it for the summer, other moving expenses, whatever. So maybe it's better to just lease through the building itself (even though it will cost a little more per month) to save that money upfront, when we really need it.

So many questions! Anyone have any advice?