I have noticed that unlike before, StreetEasy seems to no longer carry all the condo rental listing that exist out there. Now, I can find listings that only show up on (say) StreetEasy vs. CityRealty vs. Realtor.com. I suppose this is a by-product of StreetEasy starting to charge $6/day. Almost comical that brokers don't pay this for some of the listings I've found ($100K/month, say). But then... [more]
I have noticed that unlike before, StreetEasy seems to no longer carry all the condo rental listing that exist out there. Now, I can find listings that only show up on (say) StreetEasy vs. CityRealty vs. Realtor.com. I suppose this is a by-product of StreetEasy starting to charge $6/day. Almost comical that brokers don't pay this for some of the listings I've found ($100K/month, say). But then again if it's an over-priced listing a broker is just carrying to get an "in" on an eventual sale listing, why bother with $2K/year of costs if no one is ever going to rent it?
In any case, I was wondering if anyone knows a system that currently carries all condo rental listings. The interface can suck completely, I don't really care. I'm just mostly interested in making sure I'm aware of every listing.
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Response by batraa
over 5 years ago
Posts: 55
Member since: May 2008
How do you know listings Are getting missed? Doesn’t these other places also charge?
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Response by batraa
over 5 years ago
Posts: 55
Member since: May 2008
How do you know listings Are getting missed? Doesn’t these other places also charge?
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Response by inonada
over 5 years ago
Posts: 7952
Member since: Oct 2008
I don’t know a whole lot about the state of things these days, therefore the question. My wife did a random search on some building and noticed an apt that wasn’t on StreetEasy but was on cityrealty.com. So I wondered if this was a fluke, which led me to search all the most expensive listings out there on the 3 sites I mentioned. As you went down the list sorted by price, you’d see listings in all 3, or just 2, or only 1 place. And none of them had them all. It could be because of delayed feeds, or it could have been because they all charge, I dunno.
I did some brief research and saw that SE started charging for rental listings in 2017. Back in the day, long before they were bought by Zillow, back when they were trying to get a foothold, they just scraped everybody’s website for the info and listed it. So they had everything. Over time, to actually have a business model, I believe they started charging for the privilege.
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Response by George
over 5 years ago
Posts: 1327
Member since: Jul 2017
They made brokers put their rental listings in manually in addition to the charge. For a while, Brown Harris and a few others were saying they'd boycott StreetEasy, which boycott lasted about 48 hours. Then StreetEasy said they'd boot Elliman for some reason. Now there's some other site pretending to be an MLS. TheRealDeal has documented all the twists and turns. Bottom line is brokers used to guard their "exclusives" zealously and were unwilling to work together to create a proper MLS, so StreetEasy did it for them and now charges them handsomely for the privilege, in addition to making them do things like list the actual bedroom count, actual address, etc. Having first experienced NY real estate in 2005 via the wild west of the NYT rentals section, I say that StreetEasy's dominance couldn't have happened to a more deserving group of people.
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Response by 30yrs_RE_20_in_REO
over 5 years ago
Posts: 9877
Member since: Mar 2009
I agree it's ironic how SE went from beggar to "boss." I also agree that the biggest reason we don't have a real MLS is that the big firms have done all they could to derail the prospect.
Now we have REBNY saying they are going to heavily fine brokers for not having correct information on the listings they feed RLS, but I'm willing to bet they won't do anything about total fabrication of number of bedrooms, room count, square footage, etc and that big firms will be given outs for pocket listings. There's a whole separate "Universal Co-Brokerage Agreement" for New Developments because developers wanted to be able to get away with stuff "normal" sellers/their brokers were barred from.
I think you'll probably find that all the sites who use the RLS feed (yes UrbanDigs, no StreetEasy) will probably have the same listings. Brokers frequently get emails from other brokers touting their listing as "Not on StreetEasy." So I doubt you're going to find any one site that has everything.
At this point I think there is probably room for someone to step in and grab some market share because StreetEasy/Zillow has caused a lot of friction with the brokerage community. There are any number which are trying but I don't see any gaining a significant enough foothold (including UrbanDigs, where I moderate their forum). Historically brokers have been too busy stabbing each other in the back to get behind anything, especially if it would mean having rules that everyone would have to follow equally.
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Response by front_porch
over 5 years ago
Posts: 5316
Member since: Mar 2008
My old firm is shifting to OneKey -- not sure how good their coverage of NYC rentals is, and I am not currently a member. However, I am in OLR, and Nada if you have a specific search you want run I can run it there for you. Just send me an email with "streeteasy" in the subject line.
ali r.
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Response by inonada
over 5 years ago
Posts: 7952
Member since: Oct 2008
It sounds like we’re back to the bad old days somewhat and heading even further there. Really, REBNY and/or a brokerage conglomerate should have passively bought SE for the piddly $50M in 2013 and set it up as an independent operation whose profits flowed back.
Mainly, it seems like owners get screwed once more. Using 30yrs’ suggestion to look at UD’s RLS-based listings (a 4th place that didn’t match the other 3 I think), I stumbled across a place with a kinda ridiculous dropped rent relative to its price. I gotta imagine the lack of unified listing platform contributed to that, and it’s the owner that really ends up paying big-time, due to perverse incentives.
Conversely, seems like a win for the renter willing to do the work of searching multiple places, including brokerage sites directly. And the more fragmented things become, the bigger the potential win.
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Response by inonada
over 5 years ago
Posts: 7952
Member since: Oct 2008
Thanks, Ali. I’m not really going to do my comprehensive search until late next month, but I might take you up on that depending on how I decide to do it.
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How do you know listings Are getting missed? Doesn’t these other places also charge?
How do you know listings Are getting missed? Doesn’t these other places also charge?
I don’t know a whole lot about the state of things these days, therefore the question. My wife did a random search on some building and noticed an apt that wasn’t on StreetEasy but was on cityrealty.com. So I wondered if this was a fluke, which led me to search all the most expensive listings out there on the 3 sites I mentioned. As you went down the list sorted by price, you’d see listings in all 3, or just 2, or only 1 place. And none of them had them all. It could be because of delayed feeds, or it could have been because they all charge, I dunno.
I did some brief research and saw that SE started charging for rental listings in 2017. Back in the day, long before they were bought by Zillow, back when they were trying to get a foothold, they just scraped everybody’s website for the info and listed it. So they had everything. Over time, to actually have a business model, I believe they started charging for the privilege.
They made brokers put their rental listings in manually in addition to the charge. For a while, Brown Harris and a few others were saying they'd boycott StreetEasy, which boycott lasted about 48 hours. Then StreetEasy said they'd boot Elliman for some reason. Now there's some other site pretending to be an MLS. TheRealDeal has documented all the twists and turns. Bottom line is brokers used to guard their "exclusives" zealously and were unwilling to work together to create a proper MLS, so StreetEasy did it for them and now charges them handsomely for the privilege, in addition to making them do things like list the actual bedroom count, actual address, etc. Having first experienced NY real estate in 2005 via the wild west of the NYT rentals section, I say that StreetEasy's dominance couldn't have happened to a more deserving group of people.
I agree it's ironic how SE went from beggar to "boss." I also agree that the biggest reason we don't have a real MLS is that the big firms have done all they could to derail the prospect.
Now we have REBNY saying they are going to heavily fine brokers for not having correct information on the listings they feed RLS, but I'm willing to bet they won't do anything about total fabrication of number of bedrooms, room count, square footage, etc and that big firms will be given outs for pocket listings. There's a whole separate "Universal Co-Brokerage Agreement" for New Developments because developers wanted to be able to get away with stuff "normal" sellers/their brokers were barred from.
I think you'll probably find that all the sites who use the RLS feed (yes UrbanDigs, no StreetEasy) will probably have the same listings. Brokers frequently get emails from other brokers touting their listing as "Not on StreetEasy." So I doubt you're going to find any one site that has everything.
At this point I think there is probably room for someone to step in and grab some market share because StreetEasy/Zillow has caused a lot of friction with the brokerage community. There are any number which are trying but I don't see any gaining a significant enough foothold (including UrbanDigs, where I moderate their forum). Historically brokers have been too busy stabbing each other in the back to get behind anything, especially if it would mean having rules that everyone would have to follow equally.
My old firm is shifting to OneKey -- not sure how good their coverage of NYC rentals is, and I am not currently a member. However, I am in OLR, and Nada if you have a specific search you want run I can run it there for you. Just send me an email with "streeteasy" in the subject line.
ali r.
It sounds like we’re back to the bad old days somewhat and heading even further there. Really, REBNY and/or a brokerage conglomerate should have passively bought SE for the piddly $50M in 2013 and set it up as an independent operation whose profits flowed back.
Mainly, it seems like owners get screwed once more. Using 30yrs’ suggestion to look at UD’s RLS-based listings (a 4th place that didn’t match the other 3 I think), I stumbled across a place with a kinda ridiculous dropped rent relative to its price. I gotta imagine the lack of unified listing platform contributed to that, and it’s the owner that really ends up paying big-time, due to perverse incentives.
Conversely, seems like a win for the renter willing to do the work of searching multiple places, including brokerage sites directly. And the more fragmented things become, the bigger the potential win.
Thanks, Ali. I’m not really going to do my comprehensive search until late next month, but I might take you up on that depending on how I decide to do it.
An oldie but a pretty good one;
https://www.nybits.com/