The 6 Best Apartment Rental Websites in NYC (Pros & Cons)
Updated 7/9/2021
Are you looking for apartment rentals in New York? Rental websites are the perfect place to look, and you’ve got plenty to choose from. Unfortunately, the amount of apartment listings have plummeted on Zillow’s StreetEasy – a once free and popular website for finding apartments – once they started charging huge fees to list on their website. Since then, competitors have seen an increase in traffic and listings. In response to these changes, we compiled a new and updated list of the best rental websites in NYC. Note that any brokerage websites are excluded from this list.
#1 Leasebreak (Leasebreak.com)
Pros: Hands-down the #1 place to go to if you’re looking for a short-term lease in NYC between 1 to 12 months. These short term rentals also include “lease take-overs”, where you could take over someone else’s lease. This is still where some of the best deals in the NYC can be found. Since 2013, thousands of landlords, tenants, and agents regularly post (for free) on Leasebreak, and have been posting since 2013. Because they have very unique inventory (leasebreaks, short term rentals, sublets), and because it is free to post, you will surely find apartments listed here and nowhere else. Whether you want a standard short term rental, leasebreak, sublet, or lease assignment, there’s always something available. The Leasebreak rental website also has one-year rentals and a lot of “rooms for rent” as well. They value transparency and accuracy. Exact street addresses are publicly displayed for all of their listings. It is also free to use!
Cons: The website design is a bit outdated and isn’t yet entirely mobile-friendly. However, they’re working to fix all of these issues by early 2022. But if don’t mind the “look/feel” being out of date, then it’s easily one of the best rental websites out there, especially for short term rentals and leasebreaks.
#2 Frēlē (Frele.com)
Pros: Frēlē (pronounced “Freely”) is a comprehensive free marketplace for NYC rentals. Because it is “free” to post listings here (most websites charge money), you will see apartments listed here that are not listed anywhere else. Their focus is on showing videos of apartments for rent which is great for saving your time. The have everything: standard lease apartments (1-2 years), short-term rentals (1 to 12 months), and “takeovers” (motivated tenants who are breaking their leases).
Launched with a 4-point pledge to ensure that principles comes before profits, the Frēlē rental website promises to keep their platform free while placing great value in transparency. They have thousands of videos of the actual apartments you would be renting which is a great way to showcase the transparency. Also, each listing displays the exact address, and you can get in touch with listers directly. Plus, they offer excellent tips (blogs + videos) for renting in NYC at www.frele.com/learn.
Cons: Frēlē is a relatively new player in the market, but it is growing fast with thousands of rental listings. Because they are new, they don’t yet have all of the bells and whistles of some other sites but the accuracy and transparency of the site shines through.
#3 Craigslist (Craigslist.org)
Pros: Everyone has heard of Craigslist, and has probably used it before. It used to be the go-to place for searching affordable apartments in NYC. Today, it still is one of the most trafficked rental websites in NYC. And believe it or not, you can also sometimes snag a good deal on the site.
Cons: The user interface hasn’t really been updated in the last 20 years, leaving much to be desired. It is also no longer “free”. Posts cost $5. You also have to be very careful. It’s seems like everyone knows someone who was either scammed on Craigslist, or has some shady story to tell about it. This is probably the biggest risk you’ll take if you use this platform.
#4 Linecity (Linecity.com)
Pros: There is no consumer facing website we can think of with deeper ties to the NYC real estate industry. While the brand “Linecity” is a relatively new one, their listing and building data come from their parent company OLR which has been serving the real estate community in NYC for over 25 years. The website is slick with some cool features, like the ability to compare up to 3 apartments side by side. Also, you likely won’t find any other consumer website with so much historical and accurate rental and building data.
Cons: Like Frēlē, Linecity is a newer consumer marketplace for NYC listings but is slowly gaining traction. Also, unlike the other websites on this list, Linecity does not allow manual postings of listings on its website. They only show listings from their current clients or from their network (both of which are pretty vast). So while this will minimize your chances of getting scammed, it also means you may not have access to some of the DIY landlords, agents and tenants who manually post their own listings on a one-off basis.
#5 RentHop (Renthop.com)
Pros: RentHop has this unique scoring system (called the HopScore) which claims to rank rental apartments based on their quality. RentHop’s rental website is also a nationwide platform should you need to move out of NYC.
Cons: RentHop is not free. It costs money to post here ($40 for renters) so this will prevent a lot of listings from getting on the website. There will also be many duplicate apartments and many apartments without addresses on this rental website. Here’s why: RentHop makes money by charging brokers to list apartments. An unintended consequence of this means that many brokers aren’t really interested in renting the listed apartment. Rather, they want to attract you as a client so they can rent you other apartments.
#6 StreetEasy (StreetEasy.com)
Pros: While StreetEasy is half the website is was just a year ago (see “cons” below), this rental website is still one of the most trafficked rental websites in NYC, getting a lot of eyeballs. They also have some of the best “historical” data on rentals. Finally, they are very easy to use and are “feature rich”.
Cons: Almost half of all rental listings were pulled off of StreetEasy’s website in 2017 and most of those listings remain off the site. This happened because they went from a “free” model to a “paid” model, requiring agents and landlords to pay a lot of money to post listings on their website. (Also, for renters, it costs $185 to post a listing!). Like Naked Apartments, Zillow bought StreetEasy years ago leading to dramatic changes such as this one.
For more NYC rental tips, please go to frele.com/learn.
This article was written by:
Phil Horigan, NYC Real Estate Veteran
Founder, Frēlē, the free and honest NYC rental marketplace
Producer, Phil’s NYC Rental Tips [YouTube Channel]
Blogger: flowfreely.com
Instagram: @philiphorigan
Phil has been a licensed NYC real estate agent since 2004 working for some of the top real estate brokerage firms in the industry. He founded Leasebreak.com in 2013, and Frēlē in 2017. Frēlē and Leasebreak are free and transparent rental marketplaces to search for or post apartments for rent in NYC
Go to frele.com to search for NYC apartments (free service).