lauren

Hey does anyone know anything about rent-direct.com? I know what it is, but I want to know if I should trust it. It's basically a no broker fee site for finding an apartment that costs about $250. If not, does anyone know of a low broker fee place to find an apartment? help....Thanks!

bigapple

a friend in NYC used a similar service (not rent direct but another site he doesn't remember the name of). Anyways, he said these type of websites are worth the fee because they weed out the "bait and switch" brokers who get you in with no fee promises via craigslist, etc. Also, he said these sites are good because they take the rented apartments off ASAP and don't repost the same apartment a billion times like you'll see on craigslist. Rent direct claims they have support staff available via the phone as well if you have any questions and this may be very valuable to people moving into NYC for the first time. On the down side, there are many people signed up for the service and they will get the same results as you so it will still be quite competitive like craigslist. Also, many of their apartments ARE listed on craigslist as well so you might end up paying the fee for a place you could have found for free on your own. However, when I did my free preview search 39 apartments were listed as "exclusive" to Rent Direct so that's a good thing I think! I hope my rambling helped a little. If anyone else has anything to say about these sites please post! I am still not quite 100% convinced myself but $250 seems like a reasonable fee to pay to help cut down on some of the stress of finding a NYC apartment.

TheMan

check with the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs

SwimCoach

I used Rent Direct to find my apartment and it saved me the cost of a realtor. It is kind of frustrating b/c many of the apartments were also posted on other sites and there were some of the same apartments on there for months. Just because an apartment in on RD, it doesnt mean realtors dont have the listing. I found it to have a lot of apartments for rent by private owners v. building managers and that was my biggest complaint. For $250, it was worth it and I would do it again. I found it much more reliable than craigslist where people would flake out when it came time to view the apartment. Good luck.