There are many challenges related to finding an apartment in a city as crowded as New York City. Starting with knowing which are the best websites to search for an apartment in New York City.
You probably know already that many real estate companies only have a local, and not a national presence, which can make the start of your search more cumbersome, if you are moving to the city for the first time and don't know where to start searching.
But don't worry, we're here to help. In this article, we have compiled a list of the best websites for apartment hunting in NYC. Read on to find out more.
What are the best websites to find an apartment for rent in NYC?
We reviewed six websites to look for an apartment in New York City. Here is what we found:
- Facebook housing groups
- StreetEasy (streeteasy.com)
- Renthop (renthop.com)
- Zumper (zumper.com)
- PropertyClub (propertyclub.nyc)
Pros
The traditional housing process for renters consists of digging into tons of websites looking for listings, contacting tons of agents, waiting for their responses, and ending up viewing other apartments you weren't interested in because the NYC housing market moves at the speed of light!
The housing process is almost fully-automated and centralized. By simply starting a conversation for free with it through Facebook Messenger (yes, you don't have to download yet another app!),
Facebook housing groups
If you would like to do your apartment hunting on social media or ask for recommendations and advice about neighborhoods, scam prevention, and any other housing topic. It is the biggest global network of housing Facebook groups around the world, covering more than 200 cities.
Pros
The groups are meticulously combed for scammers and spammers on a daily basis, ensuring that the quality of listings and posts is high.
Additionally, the sense of community makes the difference between just using a listings app.
Cons
There is no feature to filter between listings or according to the renter’s search criteria (e.g. monthly rent, neighborhood, lease length, broker fee, etc.), making it difficult to find specific listings that match the renter’s preferences.
StreetEasy
It is one of the most popular rental and sales listings aggregators in NYC, and it is part of the Zillow Group.
Pros
StreetEasy has a variety of good features to filter the listings by size, location, no-fee apartments, etc. Plus, it only accepts exclusive listings that are verified with the listing provider. This means that the users won't find duplicated listings posted by several real estate agents.
Cons
If an owner or a renter needs to list a property for rent in StreetEasy, it costs $185 for 2 weeks. Definitely, not cheap.
Also, as it is quite expensive for real estate agents to advertise all their listings there, then not all the inventory is available on this platform.
Renthop
Renthop can be a good option to search for no-fee rentals, that are typically posted by the landlords, or by the current tenants that are looking for someone to take over the lease. This means that there is a high possibility to find more affordable properties there. Maybe not in terms of monthly rent, but the negotiation cost.
Pros
It has a cool feature to do a map-based search. Additionally, it verifies the identity and legitimacy of posters, and since the COVID-19 pandemic, it's easy to find shared-apartments and sublets there as well.
Cons
There are many duplicated listings, and it's not free of charge for renters who want to post a listing there.
Another point is that since RentHop monetizes by charing brokers per listing, then many of them just post a couple of listings, not aiming to rent out those specific properties, but to attract clients, and then show them other properties that are not shown in the website.
Zumper
The last item on our list of best rental websites is Zumper which focuses only on rentals, and at least 40% of their inventory is no-fee apartments. The platform is very user-friendly, featuring good filters to make the research pretty straightforward.
Pros
The posters' verification is very good. Most of the listings are directly posted by owners, and property management companies and the rate of duplicated listings is low. Additionally, due to the social distancing imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Zumper now offers online tours, making it possible to have apartment viewings in a safer way.
Cons
Many listings don’t have the exact address, which adds another hassle for renters, having to first ask for the exact address to see if it’s located in one of their desired neighborhoods.
Another disadvantage is that apparently, the platform now filters out low-income renters, which just makes it harder to find an apartment for rent, not only for renters with Section 8 housing vouchers but also for potential tenants whose salary has been reduced, thanks to the world economic crisis this 2020, caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
PropertyClub
PropertyClub is a relatively new player in the apartment rental space. It is only available for apartment hunting in New York City. Their website is very user-friendly and has all the filters you need for finding an apartment in NYC.
Pros
PropertyClub focuses on transparency and gets the listings directly from the source which is often the landlord. You don’t need to worry about duplicate listings or hidden broker fees. The possibility to filter for only no-fee apartments makes it one of the best no-fee apartment sites in NYC.
Additionally, you can also find a lot of good resources to support your apartment hunting process on their blog.
Cons
Unlike some other websites in this list, PropertyClub does not have a native mobile app for Android or IOs, but their website is well optimized for mobile devices, so this isn’t a big issue.
As mentioned above the apartment rental website is relatively new, and therefore the number of active apartment listings is smaller compared to older competitors like Streeteasy. At the time of writing, PropertyClub had about 10k active rental listings whereas we found over 30k active listings on Streeteasy.
Are you looking for an apartment in another city?
Check our other lists of best apartment rental websites:
