“Hi, I’m calling about the apartment at 301 Stanhope street, is that apartment available?” She asked me over the phone.
The apartment hadn’t been available for about a month. “I’m sorry, it’s rented. Where are you seeing the listing marked as available?”
She sighed heavily, seemingly months of frustration about finding a good apartment online just to be told this over and over manifested in her voice. “On Apartments.com,” she replied. “Can you do me a favor, and update this listing? I keep calling for apartments listed on Apartments.com, and they’re never available.”
To be honest, I don’t maintain my Apartments.com account. “Yes, I’m sorry, I’ll make an update. I’d suggest just using StreetEasy to search for an apartment.”
Let me be real: StreetEasy has cornered the real estate advertising market in New York City. Every listing I receive from a landlord, I rent using StreetEasy. It’s sad, and necessary, because us as agents pay a good amount to StreetEasy every month to rent our apartments. I don’t market or spend much time advertising or maintaining listings on other platforms because, well, other websites haven’t really yielded me much success. The reason that I had this listing on Apartments.com is because the brokerage I work with has a syndication with Apartments.com. If I list an apartment in our database, it is immediately then listed on Apartments.com.
But because I pay for every listing on StreetEasy, and because every listing I have gotten in the last several years has rented after being posted on StreetEasy, I use the platform without hesitation.
Sometimes, when friends ask me about how to find an apartment, I reply with one response: check StreetEasy. Agents pay a good amount to use the website and therefore, the listings are generally accurate on there.
But maybe a competitor will arise soon and challenge SE for real estate marketing rights in NYC.
I’m also hoping StreetEasy doesn’t find this blog post and use it as leverage to raise their prices — again. Several years ago, the platform was free. Now, well, it’s just a bit more than that.
I wish there was another website aside from StreetEasy to post our listings in NYC and get them rented in a timely manner. Unfortunately, right now there isn’t really.