No matter what anyone says, finding apartments for rent is still a very challenging task. We knew that in 2009 when we started RentHop, and it is still just as true today in 2016.
Thankfully, we aim to simplify your apartment search using data and quantitative analysis, along with the best possible user interface our engineers and designers could imagine - and we are tweaking it continuously thanks to your feedback!
For those of you house hunting for the first time in New York, there are at least three very unique and confusing aspects of the market. First off, unlike just about every other part of the country, there are licensed professional real estate agents dedicated to helping customers find rental apartments. However, apartment brokers work to collect commissions, called broker fees, leading to the second common NYC misconception. Some listings are no fee apartments, but for the majority of nyc rentals, the tenant pays the broker fee. To make matters even more strange, many rental brokers in New York City show open listings, meaning they do not have exclusive rights to their own inventory, so any apartment you see with one broker may also be in the inventory of a competing broker! So you have brokers, landlords, fee apartments, no fee apartments, open listings, and exclusive listings. Phew!
As you can see, things get confusing pretty quickly. Thankfully, we are here to help! And for those looking outside of NYC, we cover the rest of the country as well. In 2012 we expanded to Boston and Chicago, and in early 2014 to the entire nation. Today, thousands of agents and landlords manage in aggregate hundreds of thousands of available listings across the country.
We are a Y Combinator funded company, from the Summer 2009 batch; the first graduating class after YC permanently relocated to Mountain View and ended the bicoastal Cambridge rotation. While soliciting mentorship during office hours that summer, Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston guided us with some now infamous startup advice:
Do Things That Don't Scale. Talk to Your Customers. Make Something People Want. To this day, we try our best to provide unscalably good service and support, so if you have any questions, email us at all hours at
[email protected] We strive daily to improve the product to something more people find useful. Welcome to our apartment finder site! Please allow all of us here at team RentHop to offer you a better, unique experience as you search our apartments for rent.
