Alex Verhaeg had just turned 21 years old when he moved into a 95 sq. ft. apartment in Manhattan's East Village.

The tiny apartment was smaller than the average size of a parking spot — which is roughly 150 square feet — and didn't have a bathroom. Instead, the five-story building has three bathrooms and two showers on each floor for tenants to share.

When CNBC Make It first spoke to Verhaeg back in 2022 he was paying $1,100 a month in rent and said then that a third year in the apartment would probably be his last.

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"It gave me independence to have a spot all to myself," he says. "You had to share some things like the restroom but the apartment itself was just mine, which I really enjoyed."

Verhaeg, now 24, says living in a space that small taught him that he doesn't need many things to survive. "I enjoyed the minimalistic part of it."

But in the summer of 2023, about two or three months before his lease was up, Verhaeg had to decide whether to renew or look for a new and possibly bigger place.

"I was spending more and more time at home and I could feel the sense of the place being small and the things I was lacking," he says.

Verhaeg, a content creator and USPS mail carrier, moved out of his tiny apartment that September and into a three-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment in Midtown with two roommates. He pays $1,300 a month for his part of the rent, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

Verhaeg says there was a slight adjustment period to living in a bigger place and having access to things like a full-size stove: "I didn't have much time to think about it because it all happened so fast."

"Now I get to do more cooking and continue getting used to having roommates," he says.

Verhaeg has been living in his new apartment for six months now, but does miss his old tiny East Village apartment from time to time.

"I didn't for a while and now it comes and goes," he says. "But at the same time, I'll come back to my new place and feel like this is more of a proper apartment."

For now, Verhaeg plans to stay in his new place until this fall, when he'll start thinking about moving again.

"Maybe I'll end up in another tiny apartment somewhere," he says. "Who knows?"

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