The Australian artist selling his New York life including the lease to his Manhattan apartment for $US11,000

Fancy becoming an instant New Yorker?

Not just moving there, but having a Midtown West apartment set up with furniture and art, local knowledge at your fingertips and a circle of new friends keen to show you the town?

An Australian artist who lived in New York for 30 years is selling the lease to his one-bedroom apartment a stone’s throw from Madison Square Garden, Times Square and Penn Station.

David Art Wales created the website BuyMyLife with the hopes of selling the right to rent his apartment – along with most of his possessions, a dossier of local knowledge, introductions to his friends and a one-year “help-line” where the lucky bidder can contact Mr Wales with any questions they may have.

“I just want my home to go to a good home. It’s sort of heartbreaking to imagine selling everything piecemeal and having an online garage sale and haggling over the price of a book,” Mr Wales, who is also the chief executive of content agency Ministry of Culture, said.

“I thought, ‘Why don’t I go the whole hog?’ If I’m selling basically my life, then why not throw in advice about where to go and eat, what to order, who to talk to, who could do your accounting, who should be your dentist – little things like that.”

He is selling the lease, his furniture and his local knowledge for $US11,000 ($16,391). The lease will set the winning bidder back $US4000 a month – although not rent-controlled, it’s a grandfathered rental price below market value.

“The leasing agent has said, ‘If you can find someone who wants to just move in and leave everything where it is, we’ll give them the same rent that you’re paying’,” Mr Wales said.

The 34th-floor apartment has sweeping views across the Manhattan skyline, and the building has a gym, a rooftop terrace and a 24-hour attended lobby. Mr Wales said he had an MTV lighting technician design the lights in the apartment to maximise the view.

“When you go in, you hit one button and the whole place lights up in a beautiful kind of orchestrated way,” he said.

While he couldn’t guarantee the new leaseholder would become friends with his friends, he said he would certainly make the introduction.

“I’ve got a little group of friends over there who are always interested in the idea of a social experiment – so they’re well up for going and having lunch with somebody new and seeing if they’ve got things in common.”

Mr Wales said the idea for the BuyMyLife website was to be a “one-off art project” to sell his life in New York, but quickly people started to tell him what a great idea it was – like an “Airbnb forever”.

“There’s an unmet need for an online marketplace where you can essentially buy or swap lives with other people around the world,” Mr Wales said. “What you need is kind of a soft landing – a headstart.”

While he thought others might be interested in doing the same thing, he wasn’t sure if he would launch BuyMyLife as an ongoing business.

“It would be a big undertaking, it would basically become my job if I were to do that.”

Mr Wales and his wife Dani have now moved back to his hometown of Sydney to be closer to his ageing mother and to live a quieter life, but he said he was hoping to give someone else a headstart in The Big Apple.

“There’s a lot of stuff that’s germane to each city, and you have to learn the ropes as you go along and it can be a bit unsettling,” he said. “It’s a beautiful place to be – it’s a wonderful spot.”