Why Renting an Apartment in NYC Sucks

The Verge has a great story about New York apartment rentals and a new startup that is trying to disrupt the market.

“The dream that you can remake the apartment rental market here is a siren song that has crushed many an able-bodied startup,” says Lockhart Steele, founder of the real estate site Curbed.”

More interesting than the startup is the overview of the current state of apartment rentals in the city — and why it’s so impossible to find a place. “Too much fraud, too expensive, and requires way too much time and energy,” are the explicit reasons, and here’s where they come from:

• New York doesn’t require all available properties to be publicly listed (which allows brokers to have monopolies on some properties and prevents transparency)

• A third of listings on Craigslist are fake (“Bait-and-switch brokers sucker clients in with promises of spaces that have already been rented, then try to upsell them on a different location.”)

• Online aggregators like Zillow and StreetEasy have helped consumers find listings, but “once you find a place you like, these search sites just pass you off to a random broker, with no guarantee of honest service.”

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