The Next Step, along with start-ups like MyGradPad, is part of a growing niche industry designed to help young renters navigate the shoals of fly-by-night brokers and daunting paperwork.

Because, as native New Yorkers, they know the city intimately, they’re open to distant or emerging neighborhoods. Places like Gowanus in Brooklyn or Ridgewood in Queens are not unfamiliar names on the fringes of a map of Manhattan, but communities where they’ve visited friends, gone to parties, hung out. These young people also know how to navigate the subway system, no small issue when it comes to establishing a toehold on a street far from the city’s center.

“Kids raised in New York not only have a much more realistic set of expectations, they also have a more pioneering mentality,” said Gary Malin, the president of Citi Habitats, a firm that deals heavily in rentals and thus serves waves of new graduates each spring. “Because they grew up here, they realize that neighborhoods change and evolve, often for the better, the way the East Village has. To outsiders, nearly every place is foreign.”

Proximity to one’s parents, or lack thereof, is also a key issue; running into Mom at the grocery store is the last thing many new graduates want. “There’s no point claiming independence if you’re five blocks from your parents,” Mr. Brandt said. “If you’re going to pull the trigger, pull it far.”

Statistics compiled by his agency show that returning graduates typically want to put at least 40 blocks between their new home and the one they grew up in. If your parents live uptown, you want to be downtown, and vice versa. Turning your back on all-too-familiar streets also has its charms. Many young people who grew up in Brooklyn, for example, want to make sure a river separates their new home from the old.