Rationalizing New York rentals

Mark Gibbs' Web site tips, plus network applications news headlines

There are all sorts of ways to find an apartment in New York and most of them are time consuming, tedious, and downright frustrating. On the other hand, if you are part of the Internet generation you might want to check out Flyrig.com (no, I have no idea why they are called that).

The service is based on a Google Maps mashup that shows rentals for Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. Properties are listed by brokers who pay a flat monthly fee and owners who pay a per rental referral charge.

Outwardly the service looks simple – a Google map with pins for each listed location, but click on a pin and you’re taken to a detailed listing page for that property with tabs that take you to all rentals available, no-fee rentals, sublets, listings by broker, and, for registered users, saved listings.

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There are all sorts of ways to find an apartment in New York and most of them are time consuming, tedious, and downright frustrating. On the other hand, if you are part of the Internet generation you might want to check out Flyrig.com (no, I have no idea why they are called that).

The service is based on a Google Maps mashup that shows rentals for Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. Properties are listed by brokers who pay a flat monthly fee and owners who pay a per rental referral charge.

Outwardly the service looks simple – a Google map with pins for each listed location, but click on a pin and you’re taken to a detailed listing page for that property with tabs that take you to all rentals available, no-fee rentals, sublets, listings by broker, and, for registered users, saved listings.

There’s also access to a Community section which provides a social aspect to the service. This is currently very lightly used – I doubt whether the organization of the site fosters a compelling social networking orientation. I suspect integration with other rental- and lifestyle-oriented services might be more effective (remember, the essence of Web 2.0 business is to leverage integration with services that do what you don’t do well or at all).

A useful Community feature on Flyrig is its summary of rental prices – a benchmark for people searching for property. Did you know that a 1 bed, 1 bath apartment on East 76th goes for $2,995 per month while a 3 bed, 2 bath on Park and 30th is $5,195 per month! Makes me glad I don’t have to live in New York.

A neat feature is Flyrig’s RSS feed, which shows the 20 newest listings and there's a widget that allows you to integrate the notifications into NetVibes and iGoogle start pages.

This, my friends, is the future of rentals. As Flyrig’s user-generated broker recommendations, criticisms and comments on locations become more comprehensive, the chances of wasting your time going to look at duff rentals will significantly decrease.

You could imagine a future service with incredibly detailed information on every rental making pricing and desirability completely transparent. Until then, Flyrig might be the best bet to find that ideal New York pad.

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Mark Gibbs is a consultant, author, journalist, columnist and blogger.