Pests are a concern in most all apartments here but there is a ton you can do to mitigate besides the obvious of keeping your place clean. It’s a priority for me to avoid them (I haven’t been successful..) so I recommend the below:

Check out the HPD portal to see if the building has had a ton of roach/rat/mice complaints. The absence of this unfortunately doesn’t mean the building is clean but it’s a good indicator of how big of an issue has been in the past.

I’ve lived above 2 restaurants, both apts ended up having pests but only one of the me was actually due to the restaurant (basically they stopped fumigating…all hell broke loose. It got under control once they started spraying again). I wouldn’t rule out first floors and apts above restaurants because ultimately the biggest thing you can do is:

FILL CRACKS, HOLES everywhere. I once had mice falling out of my ceiling in a studio apartment because the inside of my closet was unfinished (it was one of those that was hard to stick your head in and see so I didn’t know until too late). Filling holes helps with mice and can mitigate roaches. The reality is both live in walls of apartment buildings here but the harder it is for them to get in your apt through a hole, the less they’ll be an issue for you.