Why Apartment Hunting Is So Difficult

We have all been there, the lease is up and it’s time to find a new rental. You talk to friends, browse the internet, and just hope something that fits your needs will show up. Though, you’re not certain something ever will. Apartment hunting is one of the most stressful situations people frequently encounter. It’s beyond difficult to know for sure what all your options are, and even once you find a good place you can’t guarantee you will love it for the duration of the lease.

Some unexpected variable could always present itself, turning a great apartment into a nightmare. We can see that apartment searching has progressed in the last ten years; from newspaper ads and driving around the neighborhood to online sites and well, still driving around the neighborhood. It hasn’t totally changed, but things are different. People are constantly posting to social media about the frustrations of finding the apartment they want. It makes you wonder, is apartment searching difficult because we are being too picky? Or because there aren’t enough good apartments in an area? Or is it something else?

Let’s start from the beginning.

If I am going to rent an apartment in New York City, there will be four parties involved. Not including myself. The apartment is owned by a landlord of course, but the landlord doesn’t want to manage the property and look for tenants because that’s not her expertise, so she hires a property management company. The property management company’s job is to make sure the apartment is occupied, rent gets paid on time and that any issues with the apartment are taken care of. However, a property management company doesn’t manage only that one apartment, it usually has hundreds, if not thousands of apartments under its management. It would be nearly impossible for them to market and promote every single apartment while focusing on keeping their properties maintained.

That’s where the role of rental broker was born.

The rental broker is a real estate broker that works exclusively with rentals. They collect and advertise units assigned to them by property management companies, and ultimately end up dealing with the guy who is hoping to rent the apartment, me. But that’s not all. Consider the fourth party involved. Websites such as Zillow.com and Rent.com are where rental brokers advertise, and that’s why people usually end up contacting brokers and finding apartments online.

However, sometimes this process can get confusing. Since there are a finite number of apartments in NYC, sometimes brokers end up listing the same properties. It is not uncommon to stumble across two ads for the same listing, put up by two different brokers. Apartment information is not easy to manage. Even though online companies are doing everything they can to clean up their sites and remove stale listings, it’s still a mess.

The only way they could really have up-to-date information is by plugging into property management systems. Not to mention, fake listings and misinformation litter these sites. But that’s a story for a different time.

So why is the process of finding and renting apartments so hard?

Frankly, because there are so many degrees of separation between the apartment and the renter. Information is not being updated in real time.Online companies get paid from ads and are more worried about the quantity of ads than the quality. Brokers get paid on commission from renting out apartments, so they only worry about the available listings. In most cases, if the listing has been rented, they won’t bother to take it off the site. Property managers care about the information in their own system, not what’s being advertised on other sites, and the landlords simply care about being paid rent and keeping a low vacancy rate.

Only me, the renter, actually cares and relies on the information which is posted on rental sites. If the information is not correct or up-to-date, it becomes very difficult for me to rent an apartment. Renters constantly have to manage the stress of browsing multiple sites at once and communicating with a variety of brokers.

The solution sounds very easy: eliminate the number of parties involved in the process and give renters information on which they can rely.

That’s easier said than done.

As I mentioned, apartment searching has progressed in the last ten years but recently it has stopped. The online rental sector is currently the only place where you can get information (or misinformation), and if you want to rent an apartment you will have to contact a third party to get it. Imagine if Amazon worked this way. You log in and instead of being given the option to purchase a product, you are given the info of a store that sells it. If Amazon worked like that, there would be no Amazon today. So why are we so behind in real estate?

Technology makes all processes and tasks faster and more efficient. Apartment searching and renting should be constantly improving with technological advances, not stuck in the standstill that it is now. Needing a new apartment is stressful enough already. Imagine if you could come to a site, browse apartments, see what you like, visit the apartment, apply and get it. Things would be easy right?

Now imagine if you didn’t even need to search for apartments. What if you just said what features you were looking for and were given a list of available apartments that match your criteria? Imagine if you had a personal assistant who would help you arrange visits, show you apartments you would like, and take care of the application paperwork for you. Imagine having one source that you could trust, where you could find apartments, rent them, and pay the rent; one solution.

Now that would make the renting process better right? It’s closer than you think, stay tuned. . .